My New Job

I’m confident that I will be starting a new job soon.

Justice Stephen Breyer has announced that he is retiring from the highest judicial panel in the country. I have tossed my hat into the ring as a candidate for the position. 

I will explain below why I am confident that I will get the nod, but first let me go back in time. After I retired from college teaching at the end of 2000, I was content to sit back and perform no other job. But after some time passed, I began to get antsy. I had to do something. However, it seemed that the only job available was as a greeter at Walmart. My ego would not let me take that job; it would have been a great comedown after having achieved the highest academic rank of full professor. I needed something at the top of the heap.

On February 28, 2013, I saw my opportunity: Pope Benedict resigned as leader of the Catholic church. Surely, the Roman folks would recognize my great administrative skills—as exemplified by my terms as English Department chairman. 

Alas, it was not to be. The church’s cardinals elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentine member of the Society of Jesus. While Bergoglio, I was sure, had fine credentials, I viewed his election as rank discrimination—specifically, ageism. Bergoglio was chosen because he was exactly four days younger than me! At first, I vowed to fight the appointment on the grounds of discrimination, but, after due consideration, I could not determine where to file my lawsuit; certainly, my case would have no standing in any United States jurisdiction, and fighting it in Vatican City seemed like a lost cause from the start. 

No other job opening appealed to me until Justice Breyer’s announcement. I should be a member of the Supreme Court. (I could explain why, but I am too modest to boast of my fairness and judgment.) I admit that at 85 years of age I am two years older than the retiring justice. However, by nominating me, President Biden would be striking a blow against the vicious bigotry of ageism. And for that reason alone, the world—and the Court—would be better places.

And I am ready to pay for my own robe!

 

Into the Wilderness

I have just discovered why I have had lack of success in my life; I have never had anyone on whom I could blame my lack of success. I have not had a scapegoat.

Consider Novak Djokovic. A great tennis player but also a great schmuck.* He has just been booted out of Australia, where he wished to pursue his tenth men’s singles title at the Australian Open, for not being vaccinated and for (let’s be nice and call them) “misstatements” on his visa application. And who was to blame for the errors on the application? Certainly not Djokovic. It was his “agent” and his “support team.”

Novak Djokovic has blamed his agent for an “administrative mistake” when declaring he had not travelled in the two weeks before his flight to Australia and acknowledged an “error of judgment” by not isolating after he tested positive for Covid.

The world No 1 released a statement on Wednesday in a bid to address what he called “continuing misinformation” about his activities in December before he came to Australia in a bid to retain his Australian Open crown. . . .

Djokovic said the incorrect pre-travel declaration of 1 January was “submitted by my support team on my behalf”.

“My agent sincerely apologises for the administrative mistake in ticking the incorrect box about my previous travel before coming to Australia. This was a human error and certainly not deliberate.”**

So, there’s the support team thrown under the bus.

*

Five years ago to the day, I wrote a blog post about plagiarism and the excuses that are forthcoming when the stealing is outed.*** I did not at that time directly cite instances when the convenient scapegoat was produced. He/she was usually a hired researcher, go-fer, or typist who allegedly practiced one-handed shuffling with the author’s file cards. And the anonymous scapegoat, bearing the sins, was released into the wilderness, while the author him/herself attempted to remain in the tabernacle.****

*

You remember the story (apocryphal, of course) about young George Washington and the cherry tree. If George were alive today, the dialogue about the tree would go like this:

Washington Senior: Who chopped down the cherry tree?

Georgie: I cannot tell a lie. It was the gardener.

***

* "There was his encounter with Dr. Igor Cetojevic, a Bosnian Serb, who, while watching Djokovic on TV during the 2010 Australian Open, became convinced that the player’s need for medical time-outs had nothing to do with asthma, as some thought, but with too much gluten in his diet. Not long after, Cetojevic met Djokovic in Croatia, during the Davis Cup, where he asked Djokovic to raise his right arm twice, once while holding, in his left hand, a slice of bread to his belly; the exercise convinced Djokovic that his muscles were weaker when proximate to wheat. There was also, in 2016, his hiring of Pepe Imaz, a Spanish coach who evangelized about the transformative power of long hugs. More recently, there was Djokovic’s friendship with the wellness entrepreneur Chervin Jafarieh, who talks of having lived in jungles and among shamans, sells supplements and elixirs, and, in May of 2020, listened approvingly during an Instagram Live conversation as Djokovic explained that polluted water can be purified by human consciousness, because water molecules 'react to our emotions, to what is being said.'”

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/djokovics-strange-australian-odyssey

** https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/12/novak-djokovic-statement-blames-agent-for-australia-paperwork-mistake-covid-positive-test-result

*** https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-dog-ate-my-file-cabinet.html

**** [H]e shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat.

And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.

But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

Leviticus 16

Stars and Stripes

I have just finished reading The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, an account of the creation of the renowned Oxford English Dictionary. The “Professor” was James Murray, the editor of the work, the “Madman,” Dr. William Chester Minor, an American army surgeon who killed a man in London and, having been found not guilty by reason of insanity, spent all save the last year of his life thereafter in mental asylums, but who contributed many citations to the project.

Reflecting on the book, I discovered that I had no real talent for fashioning dictionary definitions. Thus, I am at a complete loss to engage in a lengthy debate with those personages who are advocating that schools in the United States teach “Americanism” in a battle to combat the alleged nefarious instruction accompanying new looks at American history.

There are those who seemingly would put “Freedom” foremost in their definition of Americanism. On the one hand, the term has been appropriated by the worst reactionary politicians of the Republican Party (the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, for example). On the other hand, while the American national anthem boasts of the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” the anthem of our northern neighbors, who stuck with King George, asserts that they are “The True North, strong and free.” Since both North American countries claim the same thing, I dismiss “Freedom” (however interpreted) as a defining factor of Americanism.

What I have come up with as the essence of Americanism (my limited ability could take me only so far) is the concept of Government by Consent of the Governed, which means fair elections open to all citizens who are to be ruled by the elected. (Somehow, it seems that many of the advocates of “Freedom” are working to subvert this concept.) In a fair election one person’s vote counts as much as the next person’s. They are unintimidated by outside forces, and their vote is unimpeded by political contrivance. The vote count is supervised by impartial observers. The person with the most votes wins; the loser concedes, maybe to prevail the next time. For Americanism, there must be a next time.

*

I once lost an election by one vote. It turned out, however, that two ballots had arrived in the mail after the set deadline. I was urged by someone who had a personal dislike of the other candidate to appeal, to try to make the late ballots be counted. I refused. The rules were the rules. And according to the rules, I lost. End of story.