All in the Mind

No, I do not think that Fintan O’Toole plagiarized from me when he entitled his article about Donald Trump's antics in the March 13, 2025 issue of The New York Review of Books “From Comedy to Brutality.” (1) I had written on this blog—on February 11 (2):

Karl Marx’s observation, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” is widely quoted. (Indeed, I believe I did so previously in a blog entry.) However, events this week have made me rethink the validity of the statement, and now I believe that it should be read backward: “History appears first as farce, then as tragedy.”

Comedy/Farce; Brutality/Tragedy. 

Not plagiarism, but maybe great minds thinking alike. 

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The Economist is a fine periodical, with a fault: it has too much information per issue; one can’t finish the issue one is reading before the next plops into one’s mailbox. But it has an even greater fault—which it shares with those who claim the term “economist” as their profession: both see the world through the mist of money. 

An article dated Nov. 18th 2024, but recently linked to in an Economist newsletter, asks,

Is your master’s degree useless?

New data show a shockingly high proportion of courses are a  waste of money

The newsletter goes on to say,

In America, about 40% of graduates hold a second degree of some sort. Britain’s universities hand out four advanced degrees for every five undergraduate ones. Yet there are growing reasons to question whether this educational “arms race” is very bright. Data suggest that a staggering number of master’s courses offer students no financial return at all.

(Italics mine.)

Why do we go to school? And why do we go on to higher education after high school? And, most especially, why do we go on to graduate school after college? Certainly not for money in the future if you’re studying Renaissance iconography or Elizabethan diplomatic history. We go TO LEARN! We want to know more than we know today. It’s that wonderful quirk of the human race: curiosity. 

In another earlier post from 2013 (3), I wrote about the drive to impose a “token” tuition upon the students of the City University of New York: 

Money morality may or may not be in itself evil, but the belief that everything good, true, or beautiful must first pass commercial muster is.

Maybe those deluded seekers of MBAs who believe that paying for that degree now will jackpot them into financial Valhalla later will be chastened by reading The Economist’s dire assessment of their losing bet. But I wouldn’t count on it. They have no soul.

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(1) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/03/13/from-comedy-to-brutality-fintan-otoole/ (O’Toole actually wrote his piece on February 13, 2025, still after me.)

(2) https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-farce-their-tragedy.html

(3) https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2013/04/counting-spoons.html 

Que Bella Voce

“Strange.”

The Economist admitted to perplexity earlier this year in its obituary of Charles Keating. He was “Mr. Clean,” a “moral crusader,” a “knight on a white charger—as he saw himself,” who waged war on obscenity and pornography. He was, said The Economist, “so doughty in this holy war that Richard Nixon appointed him in 1969 to the national commission on obscenity.” He was also a generous donor to the Catholic Church (“Sundays saw him devoutly at Mass”) and the University of Cincinnati and had given “at least $1m to Mother Teresa, who in return praised his good character.”

But here was the “strange” part (according to the magazine), he was also “the man who bilked 23,000 investors out of their savings. The total loss was $250m-288m, and the cost to the taxpayer $3.4 billion.”

He was eventually convicted on 17 counts of fraud and sent to prison.

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Is the case of Robert Brennan also “strange”? 

In 1973 he gave $10 million dollars to St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, NJ (as well as a shedload of moolah over the years to Seton Hall University), only to find himself two decades later before a federal court judge and fined $75 million for defrauding investors. His legal troubles didn't end there. USA TODAY summed up his downfall:

He was arrested in 2000 for failing to disclose all of his assets on his bankruptcy petition. He was found guilty a year later of bankruptcy fraud, money laundering and obstructing justice and sentenced to nine years in prison.

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In this week's New Yorker, Rachel Aviv tells the story of Sam Kellner, an orthodox Jew, who sought justice for his son. The boy was sexually molested by “a prominent cantor,” who is a“descendant of a rabbinic dynasty.” When the boy first revealed to his teacher what had happened to him, “the teacher said that [Baruch] Lebovits [the accused] was a 'respected person' and instructed him not to think about the incident again.”

Lebovits was eventually brought to trial and found guilty on eight counts of sexual abuse. He served eighteen months before the jury's verdict was overturned on appeal on procedural grounds; later, however, Lebovits copped a guilty plea and received a two-year sentence, but he served only eighty-three days.

Aviv points out that before the original sentencing (which came to “a total of up to thirty-two years”),

nearly eighty people sent letters to the judge, requesting mercy for Lebovits. They described him as charitable, kind, blessed with a beautiful singing voice . . .

Is this case “strange” as well? Another religious, charitable person (of course it's real easy being charitable with other people's money) who was a malignant blot on society?

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As was often the case, George Orwell got there first:

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

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Sources:

http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21600648-charles-keating-moral-crusader-and-financial-snake-oil-salesman-died-march-31st-aged

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Brennan

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/07/lawsuit-robert-brennan-was-back-at-due-process/3471031/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3