WHEN THE GOOD THAT #METOO DOES MAY BE TOO MUCH

I have written about the alleged Woody Allen sexual assault case before in a wider ranging post that is now lost thanks to my computer illiteracy. I think that it's now time to address it again given that Amazon has not scheduled a release date for Mr. Allen's latest move, A Rainy Day in New York, and actors who have worked for Mr. Allen are being pressured to avoid his casting calls and return money they have earned from appearing in his films.

I have no desire to defend pedophiles or to denigrate women who report the sexual assaults they have suffered. Those are great wrongs that deserve prosecution, jail time and the ostracism of the perpetrators. The question is whether Woody Allen is, in fact, a perpetrator. I tend to think, barring substantive evidence to the contrary, that he is not. I say that I tend to think that after reviewing the facts in the case but I am not ossified in that opinion. I am open to convincing evidence to the contrary. What follows is my explanation of why I feel that Allen is not a predator. I apologize at the outset because this is a very long post. I beg you, my reader, to bear with me as I try to construct a timeline of facts rather than opinions in this matter. I hope I am successful in that attempt.

I am inspired to write this post by a report on Amazon's withholding the release of A Rainy Day in New York on the National Public Radio program All Things Considered. The report was aired on Monday, September 3, 2018. You can find it by clicking on this link. The primary source appearing in the story is Kim Masters, editor at large for The Hollywood Reporter. Ms. Masters gets several points wrong in her statements and, unfortunately, her statements correct and incorrect went unquestioned by NPR's Audie Cornish who is usually much better at questioning interviewees.

Let's state the unquestioned facts in this case which involves Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, their adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow, their adoptive son, Moses Farrow, their son, Ronan Farrow, and the adoptive daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn, Soon Yi Previn. Indeed all of the Farrow family and some of their employees are involved as are several mental health professionals, a prestigious teaching hospital where, as full disclosure, two of my daughters were born.

•  Allan Stewart Konigsberg was born on December 1, 1935 in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.
• At the age of 17 in 1952 young Mr. Konigsberg was already writing jokes for popular comedians. He legally changed his name to Heywood Allen and became popularly known as "Woody".
• Maria de Lourdes "Mia" Villiers Farrow was born on February 9, 1945 to the actress Maureen O'Sullivan and film director John Farrow.
• On July 9, 1966, at age 21, Mia Farrow married Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (born December 12, 1915) who was then almost 30 years her senior.
• In August, 1968 Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra obtained a divorce in Mexico.
• Following the end of her marriage to Mr. Sinatra in 1969 Mia Farrow went to stay with her friend, Dory Previn and her husband, André. Mia Farrow and André soon began an affair.
• In 1970 Mia Farrow married the pianist, composer and conductor André Previn (born April 4, 1929) then 16 years her senior.
• During her marriage to Mr. Previn, Mia Farrow gave birth to three children by Mr. Previn and adopted three children, two from Vietnam and one, Soon Yi Previn, from Korea.
• Soon Yi Previn's date of birth is uncertain. When, in 1978, she was adopted a court in Seoul, Korea stated her presumptive date of birth as October 8, 1970. Ms. Farrow and Mr. Previn later decided that her date of birth was October 8, 1972 based on bone scans of Soon Yi. The bone scans determined that she was between 5 and 7 years old. Both Soon Yi's official and family traditional dates of birth are simply opinions neither being supported by indisputable evidence. The 1970 date and that in 1972 are equally likely as is 1971 and 1973.
• In 1979 Woody Allen released his movie Manhattan which features an affair between his character and the character played by Mariel Hemingway, who, at the time of filming, was 17-years old. The movie can be seen an Mr. Allen's meditation on Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Lolita, though I have no idea what inspired Mr. Allen's film.
  
•  Moses Farrow was adopted from Korea by Mia Farrow as a single parent following her divorce from André Previn in 1980.
• In 1979 Woody Allen (age 43) and Mia Farrow (age 34) began an affair and very close relationship, both personal and professional, that lasted for more than 12 years. During that time they each maintained separate residences. Also during that time Allen and Farrow made several trips to Europe with Farrow's children.
•  Mia Farrow adopted the baby girl, Dylan Farrow, (Date of birth: July 11, 1985) 2 weeks after Dylan's birth. Mr. Allen was not involved in the adoption at that time.
• On December 19, 1987 Mia Farrow gave birth to a son whose biological father is Woody Allen. That son was initially named Satchel but is now legally and popularly known as Ronan Farrow. In a much later interview, Mia Farrow opined that Ronan could possibly be Frank Sinatra's biological son stating that she "never really split up" with her first, much older husband. Ronan Farrow has dismissed this allegation as "a joke".
• Woody Allen gravitated toward both Moses and Dylan Farrow. Dylan was the first child with whom he had been in a parental role from near birth. He petitioned to adopt both Moses and Dylan in 1991. That adoption was finalized on December 17, 1991.
• Dr. Susan Coates is a clinical psychologist who treated Woody Allen. She met with both Allen and Mia Farrow on many occasions and visited the Farrow home starting in 1990. She came to the Farrow home to treat Moses Farrow for depression. She had many opportunities to observe Mr. Allen's behavior toward Dylan.
• It is alleged that Mr. Allen spent a lot of time with Dylan and that she was not always happy with the amount of time Mr. Allen spent with her. It is alleged that Dylan at one point locked herself in the bathroom to avoid seeing Mr. Allen but it is unclear when that incident occurred if, in fact, it did.
• There is undisputed evidence that, during the year preceding the beginning of Woody Allen's affair with Soon Yi, Mia Farrow suggested that Mr. Allen spend time with Ms. Previn. Mia Farrow encouraged Woody Allen to take Soon Yi to basketball games because that was an interest that they shared.
• At some point during Soon Yi Previn's last year in high school, in the last quarter of 1991, she and Woody Allen began a sexual affair. Ms. Previn was either 18 or 19-years old when the affair began and might have been as old as 21.
• In January, 1992 Mia Farrow found nude Polaroid photos of Soon Yi Previn on Woody Allen's mantelpiece. He owned up to the affair.
• Mia Farrow claims that Mr. Allen told her that his affair with Soon Yi Previn was over. Be that as it may she did not bar him from her home or quit working on his then current movie, Husbands and Wives.
• For Valentine's Day, 1992 Mia Farrow sent Mr. Allen a card including a family photograph altered to show skewers through the hearts of the children and a knife through her own heart.
• During the months between January and August, 1992 Mr. Allen reported to Dr. Coates that he was receiving frequent angry phone calls from Mia Farrow in which Farrow wished him dead, threatened to kill him. Dr. Coates herself received at least one similar phone call from Mia Farrow.
• In February, 1992 Mia Farrow adopted 2 more children, Tam and Isaiah Farrow.
• During the summer of 1992 Soon Yi Previn lost her job as a counselor at a summer camp in Maine because she was neglecting her duties while spending excessive amounts of time on the telephone to a person who turned out to be Woody Allen. 
• On August 1, 1992 Dr. Susan Coates received a call from Mia Farrow in which she later testified under oath that Mia Farrow characterized Mr. Allen as "satanic and evil". During that call Dr. Coates recounted that Mia Farrow begged Dr. Coates to "find a way to stop him."
• On August 3, 1992 Woody Allen and his attorneys met with Mia Farrow and her attorneys including Alan Dershowitz. During that meeting Ms. Farrow, through her attorneys, demanded a settlement of between 5 and 8 million dollars from Mr. Allen. Attorney Dershowitz later stated that they demanded a lump sum rather than on-going child support as a way to sever relations between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow cleanly.
• On August 4, 1992 Woody Allen visited Mia Farrow's home in Bridgewater, Litchfield County, Connecticut. He was welcomed into the home. Mia Farrow and a friend took the 2 youngest children, Tam and Isaiah, shopping. They left Mr. Allen in the house with 2 babysitters, Kristie Groteke in charge of the Farrow children, and Alison Strickland, sitter for the friend's 3 children, and the Farrow children's French tutor, Sophie Berge. While Ms. Farrow was out of the house, Mr. Allen allegedly lured Dylan into an attic crawl space of the home where he allegedly sexually assaulted 7-year old Dylan.
• Mr. Allen slept in a downstairs bedroom of the home in Bridgewater on the night of August 4-5, 1992. He left after having breakfast with 14-year old Moses Farrow.
• Between August 5 and 6, 1992 Mia Farrow made a video tape of Dylan alleging that Mr. Allen had touched her inappropriately while in that attic crawl space. By Mia Farrow's admission the video tape was made "in fits and starts" over that 24 hour period.
• On August 5 or 6, 1992 Mia Farrow phoned her attorney who advised Farrow to take Dylan to her pediatrician. During that visit Dylan did not repeat the allegation against Mr. Allen but, during a second visit to the pediatrician on August 6 or 7, 1992, Dylan did allege that Mr. Allen had sexually assaulted her. The pediatrician could find no evidence of sexual assault during his examinations of Dylan during either visit.
• At no time in the days in the immediate aftermath of the alleged abuse did Mia Farrow report the abuse to the police. The first report to the police came after Dylan's pediatrician failed to find any evidence of abuse.
• On or about August 6, 1992 Dr. Susan Coates informed Mr. Allen of the sexual assault allegation. Both Dr. Coates and Woody Allen have testified that his response was repeating, "I'm completely flabbergasted!" several times.
• On August 13, 1992 Woody Allen filed an action in New York Supreme Court for sole custody of Moses and Dylan Farrow and for his son, Satchel (Ronan Farrow).
• On August 15, 1992 Woody Allen for the first time publicly acknowledged his affair with Soon Yi Previn.
• On August 17, 1992 the Connecticut State Police began an investigation of the sexual abuse allegation against Mr. Allen. As part of that investigation, Litchfield County State Prosecutor, Frank Maco, requested that the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital investigate Dylan's allegation of sexual abuse. The goal of Prosecutor Maco's request to Yale-New Haven was a determination of whether Dylan Farrow would be a viable witness against Mr. Allen in a court proceeding. During the investigation doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers from Yale-New Haven Hospital examined and interviewed Dylan, Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, their domestic staffs and others with knowledge of the relationships within the Allen and Farrow households. At the conclusion of their lengthy investigation the Yale-New Haven team authored a report that determined that Mr. Allen had not abused Dylan Farrow. They exceeded their initial goal because they determined that Dylan would not be a viable witness based on Dylan's inability to recount the abuse allegation with any consistency.
•  On August 18, 1992 Woody Allen held a news conference at New York's Plaza Hotel during which he denounced the sexual abuse allegations as Mia Farrow's manipulation of the children for the purposes of revenge and her own goals.
• Woody Allen refused to take a lie detector test administered by the Connecticut State Police though he later took one administered by an expert whom he hired. That test showed Mr. Allen as telling the truth in his denials of sexual abuse of Dylan. The test was, however, by definition, inadmissible in court and was suspect because Mr. Allen paid for the test.
• In December, 1992 Mia Farrow initiated a legal action to overturn Mr. Allen's adoption of Moses and Dylan. In the course of that legal action Mr. Allen offered to drop his appeal in the custody case if Mia Farrow would abandon the action to rescind his adoption of Moses and Dylan. She did not accept the offer. Her petition to rescind Mr. Allen's adoption was ultimately unsuccessful.
• In January, 1993 investigators from Litchfield County State Prosecutor's Office and the Connecticut State Police interviewed Mr. Allen for more than 3 hours. He denied that he had ever been in the attic crawl space but altered his statement when told that his fingerprints had been found on objects in the attic.
• On March 19, 1993 proceedings on Woody Allen's petition for sole custody of Moses, Dylan and Satchel began with Judge Elliott Wilk presiding. The hearing continued sporadically until May 4th. During the proceedings all of the principles present on August 4, 1992 testified. However, Yale-New Haven Hospital refused to testify except in a deposition by Dr. John Leventhal, the lead investigator in the case. It also came to light that the notes on which the Hospital's report was based had been destroyed.
• During the trial Judge Wilk made a number of remarks indicating his disapproval of Woody Allen's relationship with Soon Yi Previn, a relationship which was not at question in the matter before him.
• Dr. Susan Coates testified as follows:
• That she was concerned for Mr. Allen's safety given the many threats against him that Mia Farrow had allegedly made.
• That she had observed Mr. Allen's relationship with Dylan Farrow and had found it "inappropriately intense" but not sexual.
• That she had advised Mr. Allen not to visit the Farrow home in Bridgewater, Connecticut for his own safety.
• That during the August 1, 1992 telephone call from Mia Farrow, referred to above, Ms. Farrow told Dr. Coates that she and Allen had discussed marriage as recently as the week before. 
• That Mia Farrow had then asked Dr. Coates if she should marry Mr. Allen. The Doctor, reading from her notes made during the conversation, replied by asking Ms. Farrow, "Are you serious?" Ms. Farrow's response indicated to Dr. Coates that Farrow had understood that marriage to Mr. Allen was absurd.
• That Dylan Farrow was given to fantasies, often embellished statements of fact with such fantasies and that she was easily influenced by others, especially authority figures.
• Mia Farrow testified, among other things, that the Valentine referred to above was not a threat but rather that she had wanted to "depict the degree of pain he had inflicted on me and my entire family."
• The April 20, 1993 deposition from Dr. Leventhal of Yale-New Haven Hospital independently supported Dr. Coates observations of Dylan Farrow noted above stating that the allegation was the concoction of an emotionally disturbed child that had become fixed in her mind.
• Kristie Groteke, the Farrow family babysitter on the day in question, stated during the trial that she had known where both Dylan and Mr. Allen were for all except 15 to 20 minutes on August 4, 1992. She assumed that both were outside with the other children.
• Sophie Berge, the children's French tutor, testified that she had noticed that Dylan was not wearing underwear under her dress on that day.
• Mr. Allen testified that he had probably gone to the bathroom during the 15-20 minutes in question.
• A second Farrow babysitter, Monica Thompson, who was not present on the day in question, stated in 2 sworn affidavits the following:
• That she had felt pressured by Mia Farrow to support the allegation of sexual abuse by Mr. Allen but had not been willing to do so.
• That Kristie Groteke had spoken to her (Monica) of similar pressure from Mia Farrow.
• That Ms. Groteke told Ms. Thompson that Dylan Farrow had not been out of Ms. Groteke's sight for more than 5 minutes on August 4, 1992.
• That Ms. Groteke had not seen Dylan without underwear on that day either.
• One of Mr. Allen's attorneys testified that Farrow's attorneys had suggested to him that "the charges could be made to go away" if Mr. Allen agreed to pay Mia Farrow 7 million dollars.
• Farrow's attorneys claimed that they had been suggesting a support settlement for the children and never offered any quid pro quo regarding the sexual abuse allegation.
• Both sides hired psychiatrists to examine the video tape of Dylan that Mia Farrow made on the day following the alleged sexual assault.
• The forensic psychologist Mr. Allen employed, Dr. Anne Meltzer, decided that she was in agreement with the findings in the Yale-New Haven report. She also found that the video tape made on August 5-6, 1992 was suspect because of heavy editing.
• The child psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Harman, that Mia Farrow employed testified that the Yale-New Haven report was seriously flawed and that he found no evidence of thought disorder in Dylan.
•  In June, 1993 Judge Wilk handed down a 33 page decision. He denied Mr. Allen's petition for custody of Moses, Dylan and Satchel (Ronan) insisting that Mr. Allen's behavior toward Dylan had been "grossly inappropriate" and that Dylan needed to be protected from Mr. Allen. Somewhat ironically Judge Wilk found Mr. Allen's defense which claimed that the allegation of sexual abuse was manufactured by Mia Farrow out of her hurt over the affair with Soon Yi and in revenge for that hurt to be a reason for deciding against Mr. Allen. Judge Wilk asserted that Mr. Allen was maliciously trying to pit members of the Farrow family and staff against one another. Judge Wilk dismissed the findings of the Yale-New Haven investigation out of hand because of Dr. Leventhal's refusal to testify in person and because the investigation notes had been destroyed. The judge also ordered Mr. Allen to pay $1 million in Mia Farrow's court costs.
• On September 20, 1993 State Prosecutor Maco attempted to interview Dylan in the presence of a female police officer. He later stated that she "shut down" whenever he broached the subject of the sexual abuse.
• Based on State Prosecutor Maco's observations of Dylan Farrow he called a news conference on September 24, 1992. At that conference Mr. Maco announced that he would refuse to pursue prosecution of Woody Allen because Dylan would not be a viable witness. Mr. Maco believed that there was probable cause to prosecute but that a trial would be unsuccessful because Dylan was such a poor witness.
• Mr. Allen subsequently appealed Judge Wilk's decision and filed complaints for prosecutorial misconduct against State Prosecutor Maco. Though the appeals and hearings continued well into 1995 the authorities in Connecticut found no reason to censure Frank Maco and Judge Wilk's decision was upheld.
• Woody Allen and Soon Yi Previn began living together and were married in the city of Venice, Italy on December 23, 1997. They are parents of 2 adoptive children.
• In January, 2014 Woody Allen won the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for his work in movies.
• The Golden Globe award to Mr. Allen initially inspired messages on Twitter by both Mia Farrow and Mr. Allen's estranged son, Ronan (Satchel) Farrow.
• Subsequent to the tweets from her mother and younger brother, the next month Dylan Farrow responded with an open letter to The New York Times blog of family friend, Nicholas Kristof. You may read the text of Dylan's letter as printed in Kristof's blog here though I understand that the full text is longer. I apologize for not being able to locate the longer version.*
• The New York Times allowed Woody Allen to respond with an op-ed printed on February 7, 2014 which you may access here.
• Over the years Moses Farrow has reconciled with Woody Allen. Moses, who was 14-years old at the time of the alleged incident, has repeatedly claimed that there was no molestation on August 4, 1992 of Dylan or anyone else. Moses is particularly well placed to recount the events of that day in 1992 because he was the oldest child present and the only person who was not either a young child or in Mia Farrow's employ. You may read Moses' lengthy rebuttal to Dylan here.
• Ronan Farrow supports Dylan's claim of abuse and has become a champion of abused women in the Harvey Weinstein Case and that of many other powerful men who have misused their authority and reputation to sexually assault women. His writing on the subject of sexual abuse has brought long overdue scrutiny to many influential men and has cost many of them their careers.
• Ronan Farrow's 2017 revelations about Harvey Weinstein and others has brought about the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in social media and a too long delayed decreasing tolerance for abusive behavior toward women.
• Women who want to support Dylan Farrow have attacked many movie stars who have appeared in Mr. Allen's movies pressuring them so far that some have returned the money they were paid for their work in Mr. Allen's movies, donating those funds to charity and agreeing not to appear in his movies hereafter.
• The Goodspeed Opera House in  East Haddam, Connecticut and the Circle Theatre in Grand Rapids, Michigan have cancelled productions of Mr. Allen's stage version of his movie, Bullets Over Broadway.
• Amazon Films has, as stated above, no release date for Mr. Allen's latest movie, A Rainy Day in New York. The film has subsequently been released.
  
• To date there has never been another allegation of sexual abuse against Woody Allen involving any woman or child.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I must own up to my own history. I have been married and divorced twice. My first wife is the mother of my children, 3 amazing, wonderful daughters. Shortly before my third daughter was born in 1979 my then wife fell in love with a woman with whom she worked. Now, over 40 tears later, they are married and happy together for which I greatly admire them. When we separated I gave them both a copy of Sappho's poetry.

Let me state clearly at this point that I am happy that my ex-wife found her true nature and someone who has been her love and now wife for nearly 40 years. During that time I have had a second failed marriage and several long-term relationships that have ended in distress or simply petered out. Who has the more traditional, stable relationship? Certainly not me. There is nothing wrong with same sex relationships. When I see a same sex couple in public my reaction is the same as mine when I see a heterosexual couple: that how lucky they are to have each other and how I wish I had as much. It is hard enough to find friends who are congenial to one another, let alone a partner with whom one can be totally intimate and more so when that intimacy lasts for years. The recent Obergefell decision by the U. S. Supreme Court is a long overdue act of simple justice. That said being a gay man or woman does not prevent that person from acting foolishly or being pray to the same mental and physical problems that beset heterosexual men and women. No one is crazy because they are gay though people who act in crazy ways can be gay, straight and any variation in between. We are all human beings, frail and strong, healthy and sick, foolish and wise and usually all of those things in the same person at different times.

On August 31, 1979 my wife and I separated. We agreed to joint-shared custody of our girls. They spent half of each week with me and half with their mother. As a child of divorced parents I did not want to be a weekend father nor would I have ever deprived my children of their mother. An equitable division of custody seemed to me then and now as the best way to proceed in raising our daughters.

As I was growing up I was subject to spankings including some with a belt from my mother. I also never heard a positive word from her about my father. The spankings hurt physically. The denigration of my father hurt in other ways because was he not half of me? I vowed to myself as a father that I would never run their mother down to my daughters. I also refused to spank the girls or use any corporal punishment. I didn't like it as a boy and I knew that my daughters would feel the same were they subject to such treatment. I must own up to not being perfect in my resolution. I once tried to restrain my middle daughter while we were in a car. She was screaming behind me. I was in the driver's seat. I reached back to grab her, hit her face and bloodied her nose. I also held my oldest daughter's arm too tightly while trying to get her to stop misbehaving while we were in a store. I was wrong. I apologized and regret those incidents to this day but I still feel that I have managed to largely stick to me resolutions.

While my wife was pregnant with our first child we discussed baby names. We agreed that the child would be a Junior, named after me if it were a boy. If the baby were a girl my wife insisted that our daughter "had to be" named "Sharon Naomi" combining the name of her college roommate with her own. Though it would be years before my ex-wife could admit it, I am convinced that she was born attracted to women and that she was in love with a friend from grammar school when we first met as Freshmen in high school. The reason our oldest daughter "had to be" named Sharon Naomi was to unite my wife with her unacknowledged love for her college roommate.

When our first daughter was born my wife worked days and I worked nights. Consequently our daughter bonded with me which made my wife extremely jealous. I always called her "Big Girl", "Old Girl" and, most often, "Old Beautiful". Before our second daughter was born just over a year later my wife decided to quit her job so that she would be home with our children. Around three months after our second daughter was born our older daughter, when I called her "Old Beautiful", suddenly began answering, "No! Ug-ally girl!" That was very strange and puzzling until one evening when I left for work, found I'd forgotten my car keys and had to return to our apartment. My wife was putting the girls down for the night in their cribs. She was telling our second daughter that she was her own and beautiful and our older girl that she was ugly. I eventually ended that situation by pretending that my mother-in-law must have been the culprit and insisting that it stop. They both are equally beautiful, equally wonderful. Neither should ever have been told otherwise.

The events in this long seeming digression has unquestionably colored my view of the allegations of sexual abuse against Woody Allen. I feel that I would be dishonest if I did not own up to that fact. I would also like to point out that my ex-wife's jealousy over my relationship with my daughters has led to other similar attacks on me over the years designed to adversely affect my relationship to my 3 wonderful daughters.

While acknowledging how my own experience colors my view of Woody Allen's case I must say that I have no trouble believing that a mother, caught up in her own anger and pain, might indoctrinate her young children to the detriment of those children as well as her former partner.

As I see it this whole complex of relationships and allegations pivots on the relationship between Soon Yi Previn and Woody Allen. The popular belief that Ms. Previn was "under age" when their affair began makes it more plausible for Dylan's allegations to be true.

At the time of the alleged incident Dylan Farrow was a very impressionable age 7, Ronan (Satchel) Farrow was age 4 and Moses Farrow was age 14. As an intelligent 14-year old, it seems that Moses' observations should be given significant weight. If the train set was in a converted garage as Moses claims rather than in an attic crawl space the most significant detail of Dylan's accusation breaks down completely. Also if the train set was not in the attic, Woody Allen's description of the events of August 4, 1992 are more accurate and believable than Dylan's regardless of how thoroughly convinced Dylan has become of the accuracy of her own story.

However, I would like to return to the NPR interview with Kim Masters of The Hollywood Reporter with which I began this essay. The popular perception of Woody Allen as a seducer of teenage girls that Ms. Masters mouthed to Audie Cornish is both wrong and scurrilous. When Soon Yi Previn and Woody Allen began their affair she was at least 18-years old and possibly as old as 21. She was not as Ms. Masters alleged "16".

One feminist view of Dylan Farrow's sexual abuse allegation is that she is a woman who was victimized by a powerful man, one of many too many whose allegations have been ignored and pain dismissed and ignored. I fully understand that knee jerk reaction because it is unquestionably true in the vast majority of cases. That does not mean that such an injustice is true in every case nor does it mean that one false or incorrect allegation means that all allegations are false or incorrect. It means that we must look at and weight the verifiable facts in each individual case rather than just making uninformed, biased judgments.

The popular perception of Soon Yi's age when her affair with Woody Allen began is wrong. She was unquestionably "of age" which may be why Mia Farrow never leveled an abuse allegation against Woody Allen for the relationship with Soon Yi. Now let us look at the age disparity between Woody Allen and the various actors in this case. Mr. Allen was certainly a much older man when he and Soon Yi became involved. Is it not appropriate to note that Soon Yi had lived in a home for 13 years with a mother whose relationships were consistently with significantly older men? Is it not possible for an orphan child to gravitate to a major male figure in her life? Is it so incomprehensible that an older man might be easily seduced by the attentions of a much younger woman?

That last question brings me to what I feel is the most distressing issue in this whole case. The feminists who leap to Dylan's defense and who are willing to bully other women into forgoing money they have earned by their legitimate toil are also willing, whether they realize it or not, to deny Soon Yi Previn any and all agency, decision or even humanity in this matter. Since the abuse allegation first became public in 1992 Soon Yi has been relegated to the status of a victim and a 2 dimensional one at that. Never in any of the last 31 years have most feminists insisted on the humanity of Soon Yi or treated her an an empowered woman. Perhaps she is and perhaps she is not. In either case, I believe that she deserves the respect of being treated as a woman who is an individual in her own right. If there can be an evaluation of Ms. Previn as a whole human being we might learn whether she is just a powerful man's pawn or a human being deserving of as much respect as her sister, Dylan.

What about this perception of Woody Allen as a powerful predator? Woody Allen worked his way up in the entertainment world on his own. He has become a major movie director. He has earned his reputation as a comedian, writer and director through a knowledge of literature and of the great films that preceded his own. Mia Farrow, on the other hand, is a child of Hollywood royalty groomed for the acting trade by an accomplished, famous mother and a notable director father. She is an accomplished actress in her own right. However, to paraphrase the words of that wonderful Texan, Jim Hightower, Mia Farrow was, "born on third base and thinks she hit a triple." I agree that Woody Allen is rich and powerful within the artistic communities of New York and Hollywood. I also believe that Mia Farrow has wealth and power within those same communities that probably equals that of Mr. Allen. By insisting that Woody Allen has money power and male privilege and ignoring Mia Farrow's money, power and privilege as a part of Hollywood royalty skews the view of this case just as improperly as does the myth about Soon Yi Previn's age.

I found it difficult to deal with the end of a marriage that began deteriorating almost before it began. A marriage that destroyed my long held hope that I, a child of divorce, would never visit that upon my own children. I cannot imagine the pain of finding that one's long relationship was ending because my partner had fallen in love with my adoptive daughter and she with him. What I can imagine is giving my wife and her new partner a copy of Sappho's poetry as a wish that they have a good life together. I cannot imagine reviling my ex-partner especially to my children. The children are all important. Attacking the person they view as a father or mother inevitably makes the child less secure in him or herself. That is a crime that is utterly unconscionable and just as unconscionable for the same reason as child molestation.

Three separate examinations, physical and verbal, of Dylan Farrow in the immediate aftermath of the sexual abuse allegation by her own pediatrician and by a full team of professionals dedicated to investigating child abuse found that Dylan's allegation was not credible. The Yale-New Haven team determined that Dylan's allegation was either a fantasy of her own or one that was either originated or magnified by her mother, Mia Farrow. Yes, the team destroyed it's notes and, yes, Dr. Leventhal refused to come court to testify. He was, however, deposed by attorneys for all parties in the case. A deposition is not a simple note to the court stating "this is what I think". That Judge Elliott Wilk discounted Dr. Leventhal's deposition smells strongly of bias. It may not have been but the smell is certainly there.

Dylan Farrow has excoriated Woody Allen for alleged use of a public relations campaign to denigrate her and Mia Farrow. I have no doubt that Mr. Allen has used his public relations team to defend himself. In that I am not judging whether the narrative he and his employees propound is correct or not. What is incorrect is failing to acknowledge that Mia and Dylan Farrow have access to their own public relations team, most notably in Ronan Farrow. I do not mean to accuse any party of wrong doing. I do mean to point out that there is more balance among the parties than there is imbalance just as there is more balance in the power that the parties wield because of their several relations to the entertainment industry . If I am making any judgement here it is that the popular narrative is imbalanced. Dylan and Mia Farrow are unquestioned victims and Woody Allen is an unquestioned cad and child abuser. Cad I will grant you. Child abuser is, I believe, in serious doubt.

As a corollary to the issue about public relations I refer you to Moses Farrow's narrative of his life in Mia Farrow's household. Once again, Moses was an adolescent of 14 in August, 1992. He is the  person present, other than the principles, best positioned to recount the incidents of that day and the structures of the Farrow household. Yet Moses has been reconciled to Mr. Allen. Moses narrative has been frequently and vociferously denigrated by the very public relations team that no one seems to believe is available to Dylan and Mia Farrow.

My understanding of feminism has always been that men and women should have equal pay, rights and opportunity. If we all, regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, national origin or any other allegedly distinguishing characteristic, stand on an equal footing we can rise or fall on our individual merits. If that is the meaning of feminism I am all for it. What I oppose is replacing male chauvinism with female chauvinism. A redress of grievances is necessary but not a substitution of one form of inequity for another. I rather think that giving Moses Farrow as much credit as we afford Dylan might give everyone a more rounded picture of the abuse allegation and all parties in this complex matter.

Finally, Woody and Soon Yi Previn have been together since 1992. They have been married for 24 years as of this writing. They have 2 adoptive children and never has there been any other allegation of abuse against Mr. Allen. I have not heard of any allegation of inappropriate behavior by Mr. Allen to any of the many actresses who have appeared with him on screen over his long film career. Those facts may count for something.

In the midst of a break up of epic proportions with details that are the stuff of melodrama, is it so utterly impossible that an aggrieved mother might weaponize her young children against her former lover and their father both adoptive and biological? Certainly it is no less plausible that a jealous mother who might convince one child that she was ugly to shower attention on another. I don't and cannot know what happened at Frog Hollow in Bridgewater, Connecticut on August 4, 1992. I do know that there is a false narrative regarding some persons involved in this matter. Which of those persons is an open question. Personally, I think Woody Allen has been badly treated but I do not know that with any kind of certainty.

The final point I wish to make is that while I understand the impulse by many abused women to support Dylan Farrow. I cannot support people who bully performers and producers into a boycott of Woody Allen's films when there is so much uncertainty about the sexual abuse allegation. There is no question about the abuse carried out by Harvey Weinstein or a number of others who have become objects of scorn due to their confirmed abuse. There are many questions in the Woody Allen case so I must feel that it is just as wrong to bully women and men who support them into a boycott as it was for Mr. Weinstein or Donald Trump to bully and bribe women into silence when they were raped or romped with. Dylan Farrow deserves support and sympathy she does not deserve vigilante revenge. If an actor decides not to work with Mr. Allen in the future he or she has that right. If a production studio decides not to work with Mr. Allen after fulfilling its contractual obligations, they have the right to sign no further contracts with him. Yet there are those in the good and useful #MeToo movement who would take things too far. Just as we abhor men who have destroyed women's careers for rejecting their sexual advances we must also abhor women who would destroy men's careers without convincing supporting facts.

ADDENDUM

Since publishing this post Soon Yi Previn has chosen to speak out on her life with Mia Farrow and with Woody Allen. You, reader, can read the text of the interview as printed in New York Magazine at this link. I believe that Soon Yi's own narration should be read in the context of all the first hand accounts of the alleged assault on Dylan Farrow and in the context of facts in the case. Not rumors. Not misinformation. Not opinion. Most especially not in the context of the bad behavior of other men. Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, Matt Lauer, Bill Cosby and Louis C. K. are not Woody Allen. That does not mean that Mr. Allen cannot be guilty of some appalling behavior but that it means that he must stand or fall on his own individual behavior rather than by being lumped in with others who have behaved appallingly toward women. I am inclined to take the view of Mr. Allen as supported by Soon Yi Previn and Moses Farrow. Others find the accounts of Mia, Dylan and Ronan Farrow more likely. None of us can know which narrative is the more factual or, perhaps, the less fictional. What we can do is examine our own biases and the undisputed facts and decide which comports with what we can actually know.

I have had occasion to revisit this post in September, 2022 because of a couple of stories that appeared on shows on NPR. The first was a discussion of ethics in entertainment on Luke Burbank's show Live Wire Radio. The second was an interview with the host of the podcast You're Wrong About on the Seattle NPR Station KUOW-FM. In consequence of that more recent edit I have corrected some typos and grammatical errors as well as up-dated some statements of duration such as the 24 years since Soon Yi Previn's marriage to Woody Allen rather than the "21" in the original post.

Finally, in this 2022 review I have become aware that some of the links in the original post no longer work. I am trying to bring them up to date so that they still call up the texts to which they refer.

* If any reader can link the full text of Dylan Farrow's 2014 letter, please do. I will replace the link above with one to the full text. 

 

THE MOST SPECIAL OF SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1755) :

Patriotism, n. The last refuge of a scoundrel.

-Dictionary of the English Language

Ambrose Bierce (1911):

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

 -The Devil's Dictionary

Let us now praise famous snowflakes...well, actually just one extra, most special and one and only notable special snowflake. Let us praise him "Bigly".

The American neo-Fascist right wing through its wholly owned mouth organ, Fox News, has peddled the idea that Liberals (in Fox's definition anyone a millimeter or more to the left of Mussolini or Francisco Franco) are "special snowflakes" (i.e. unique and delicate, easily destroyed by a breath of warm air) when violence, racism, bullying or unreasoning attacks evoke a counter-response in the individual or a group.

Now I give you the star in his own mind, Mr. Donald J. Trump who styles himself President of the United States of America and wraps himself around any nearby flag. This Orange Snowflake seems to invoke patriotism with every other breath while avoiding any patriotic actions himself. President Bone Spurs wants the U. S. Military to parade through Washington, D. C. for him solely because he thinks he personally deserves a military parade. What has he done to deserve such a parade? Well, let's see...he's allowed military personnel to keep their pay increase while withholding all pay increases for civilian government employees. He's appointed military personnel to several cabinet positions and so far only one of them had been forced to resign for criminal acts. He also says nice things about the military at every rally he conducts. Oh! I almost forgot; he saw a military parade on Bastille Day, 2017 while visiting Paris and thought that he should have one too.

Vladimir Putin's favorite American asset regularly rails against news outlets - other than Fox, of course - as "the enemy of the people". The Great Patriotic President has a problem with the idea of a free press. Under his view of democracy any organization that opposes him and/or publishes criticism of him is "the enemy of the people". Truth itself is "the enemy of the people" if it isn't the fictional "truth" that he and his Ministry of Truth cobbles up to aggrandize the Republiscum's Fearless Leader. Yet there's a glitch that Mr. Putin's asset forgets(?), ignores(?), edits out(?) of the First Amendment to our Constitution to wit: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Those six injunctions were so important to our founders that they became the first items specified for protection in our Constitution. Nestled in there is freedom of the press. Therefore, The Great Patriotic President is railing against one of the foremost protections for our rights. Not especially patriotic and definitely the act of a scoundrel I think. 

Yet we should ask why he feels that the press is "the enemy of the people"? In every case that raises Mr. Putin's asset's ire, the material to which he objects is criticism of himself personally or of the government and/or political party he heads. The press is not "the enemy of the people". Rather to him it is an enemy of The Great Patriotic President himself. The press isn't criticizing Americans generally or any specific group except by implication those foolish enough to vote for and continuing to support The Great Patriotic President. They are criticizing The Great Patriotic President and his acts either direct or indirect through his government and party. I reject the idea that the press is the enemy of anyone. The press is, if anything, the enemy of lies, corruption, despotism and injury to the people. That is exactly why the first Congress decided to protect the press in that First Amendment. What The Great Patriotic President purposefully confuses is criticism of himself and attacks on the American people. 

Between 1933 and 1945 no German pledged support to the German state. The salute was not "Heil Deutschland!" The salute was "Heil Hitler!". Our democracy from the outset was one of laws and not of individuals. We had just, after all, fought an eight year war against a government of individuals, in that case a king. We are a representative government meaning that we elect people from among the ranks of the people to represent our interests in the government. Our Constitution begins with the words, "We, the People...." Notably it does not begin I, George Washington... or James Madison... or Alexander Hamilton... or Benjamin Franklin.... The Constitution does not begin with the name of any individual person because government of, by and for an individual person was one of the primary ideas we were against when trying to bring into the world a nation new to a world rife with kings, emperors and other dictatorial individuals. Herr Drumpf seems unaware that he is not the nation. If there are anythings antithetical to a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" they are an autocrat (one who governs for himself alone) or an aristocrat (one whose social rank makes him superior to all others). Those terms, derived from the French, are the diametrical opposite of a democrat. I would suggest that The Great Patriotic President has raised himself to the aristocratic status of the most special of special snowflakes.

In the few days preceding this writing this Orange Snowflake has suggested that a book criticizing his government and an op-ed piece in the New York Times are acts of "Treason?". The only way in which those publications could be "Treason?" is if President Putin's Puppet is the government and the nation. So far we have managed to retain the concept that the only treason we recognize is betrayal of our Constitution and laws. The Great Patriotic President now claims that he must know who penned the anonymous op-ed piece as a matter of national security. I have many reservations about that anonymous author but the only security endangered by the op-ed piece is the security of the Orange Snowflake himself. The only threat to the nation is The Great Patriotic President himself.

In a campaign rally in Montana The Great Patriotic President opined that the op-ed piece was a cowardly act. I would tend to agree with the charge of cowardice. At times I have said and written things that I would rather not have done on further reflection but regardless of my second thoughts I have always owned up to my mistakes as well as my successes. I think that the anonymous writer should own up to his article. Be that as it may, the Orange Snowflake pronounced that the article was "very unfair". Unfair? To whom? Unfair to poor widdle Donnie, The Great Patriotic President? The Orange Snowflake that cannot endure the faintest breath of criticism? Poor widdle Donnie! How sad he must be to be triggered by such a mean, vile blizzard of truth. 

I long for the day when he is no longer protected by the craven Republiscum in Congress, when the faintest breath of truth will dissolve this Orange Snowflake and send him to the oblivion of a prison that he has so richly deserved. Until that day I would amend a venerable warning and urge my fellow countrymen, "Don't eat the yellow or the Orange snow!"

MONUMENTS, DIXIE AND MONUMENTS IN DIXIE

I wish I was in the Land of Cotton.

Old times there are not forgotten.

Or in Mississippian William Faulkner's apt phrase referring to his home region, "The past is not dead. It's not even past."

For a couple of years now we have been distracted and agonizing over monuments, songs, buildings, books and other supposed desiderata that have compromised or downright unpleasant connotations. For the moment I'm going to limit myself to the discussions around race, racism and the fetishizing of the Confederacy. So let's get one thing out of the way immediately. 

The American Civil War was not a "War of Northern Aggression". The first shots fired in that war rained down on a Federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of the secessionist city of Charleston, South Carolina. Major Anderson did not fire on Charleston first. He was fired upon. Nor was the Civil War a "War for States Rights". The states kept their Constitutionally guaranteed rights but they had to acknowledge that they were parts of one nation and subject to the laws thereof. The whole point of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the ratification of our Constitution was to knit together what had been thirteen fiefdoms at war with one another and often with themselves. Our Civil War settled the fact that we are one nation in which states have rights but not rights that supersede those of the Federal Government.

The American Civil War was fought over slavery and the preservation of the plantation system that could not exist without slave labor. Every one of the secession documents and secession constitutions of the Confederate States make it absolutely clear that slavery was the issue behind secession and all that followed so let's be clear about that from the start.

Here we are more than one hundred and fifty years later and the freedom that a northern victory conferred on former slaves has never been fully realized. Too often we see minorities, black, brown, Native American and others cheated, denigrated and abandoned not to mention the every lengthening list of murder victims: Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castille and on and on stretching both to past and future. We have forced African-American and other racial and ethnic groups into ghettos. Because Irish, Italians, Polish, Germans and Jews among other Europeans are considered "white" they assimilated quickly and within a century became part of the American majority. Perhaps the greatest assimilation factor was World War II during which members of many ethnic groups found themselves in the same foxholes trying to stay alive while fighting a common enemy both in the actual battlefield and in the movies shown at home.

African-Americans, unlike their pale, European cousins have always had their skin color to identify and exclude them. Too often they have been seen as Africans while their white sisters and brothers excise the "American" part of their group identity.

The past truly isn't even past. Lynchings now seldom involve a rope, at least outside of a jail cell. Today they involve a choke hold or an all too eager policeman's bullet. Yet it is those very bullets and the videos that allow bystanders to document the abuses of police and other citizens that have made the racism and discrimination obvious to those previously inclined to dismiss such claims. Thus having brought the Jim Crow past manifestly forward into the present we are also sensitive to the symbols of that horrible past that persist into our slightly less horrible present.

Much has been made of David Wark Griffith's Birth of a Nation as the inspiration for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th Century. That's a facile and largely wrong identification. The U. S. Supreme Court handed down the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. For that decision to reach the Supreme Court there had to be segregation long before Homer Plessy was refused a seat in a rail car. If we are looking for a beginning to the Ku Klux Klan we have to look into the hearts of men who can observe another human being and find a difference that makes the observer superior to the person observed. We have to look at men and women who refused to accept freedom and equality for all human beings. We have to look at white women who valiantly fought for their right to vote but would not consider that their African-American sisters should have that right too. We have to look at men and women who refused to accept that the world that they knew and profited from was, to coin a phrase, "gone with the wind" and never would come back. We definitely have to look at "The Corrupt Bargain of 1877" that traded Reconstruction and Federal troops occupying the former Confederate states for the presidency of minority Republican Rutherford B. Hayes rather than the majority vote's choice of Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Griffith's film and Woodrow Wilson's personal racism sure had an effect but the Klan hordes who came out from under their several rocks through the 1920s weren't new. They were just revealed. The Klan and other racist groups and individuals (e.g. the German-American Bund, America First, Westbrook van Voorhis or the popular Radio Priest, Father Charles Coughlin) were always lurking in the penumbra at the edges of our vision. They just came out into the centre of focus for a time. I am not defending Birth of a Nation. The script is an appalling racist screed and needs to be acknowledged as such. It is also, however, a work of art. The narrative may be vile but the skill and perception that went into making it is worth seeing. That is the dichotomy that I wish to discuss very shortly.

Much like Birth of a Nation is only one expression of the racism infecting our society, the statues now coming down or, more often, staying up long after their meaning gone from bad to worse have a complicated and fraught meaning. Many who want statues honoring soldier and figures of the Confederacy removed cite the fact that most were erected between the 1890s and 1920s, long after the Civil War was over and the battlefield dead turned to dust. That late advent is indisputable fact but I would suggest that we also consider that time in a slightly different light. The 1890s into the 1920s saw the passing of the great majority of the survivors of that war. The old veteran who might be seen at some local popular spot ready to tell stories of his youth in battle was no more. That his friends and neighbors and, yes, often fellow Klan members, might subscribe to erect a statue to their local veteran and all such veterans is no more perverse than the monuments to those who served in World War II, Korea or Vietnam that now stand on the National Mall. What is perverse is the cause for which that veteran fought.

When I was a boy and obsessed with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War I found much that was admirable in Robert W. Lee, Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, Joseph Johnson, Philip Kearney, Ulysses Grant and, perhaps the noblest next to Lincoln, William T. Sherman. As a Union man and admirer of Lincoln I could still feel the pain of Confederate General John Bell Hood after losing the Battle of Nashville and seeing his army destroyed. Hood had lost both an arm and a leg in the war. He had to be helped about the camp and strapped onto his horse. I have no sympathy for his cause but I do not have so stony a heart as to remain unmoved by this man, wracked with sobs, alone in his tent after the battle knowing that he had lost all of the Confederacy west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi River. Hood is as tragic a figure as King Lear and deserves a tear no less than Shakespeare's supremely tragic king despite his fight for wrong to his fellow men. He is not less worthy of remembrance than martyrs for the rights of all human beings like Medgar Evers or Fred Hampton. I am not about to set up a statue to John Bell Hood who is already remembered in Fort Hood, Texas nor will I oppose the removal of a single statue to him. His story, like those of the much more admirable Evers and Hampton, is worth remembering still.

The great problem for the Confederate symbols and statues and even the song, Dixie, is that they have been adopted by the worst of us, the new Klan, the casual racists and the neo-Nazi alt-Right, the white supremacists who, with every word and act, prove to the world and especially to this old white man that there's precious little that's supreme about being white.

The statues in question are tainted at the root from racism and they are further tainted by the inhuman and sub-human scum who cleave to them in support of their odious beliefs. Yet I can foresee a day, a day that the greatest hero of my lifetime, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also foresaw. That day is one when the past is at long last past. When we have acknowledged that humanity, equality and decency are the birthright of every human being and we can go to museums and parks and public buildings and view statues and monuments to men and women who attempted what they believed were great things but in service of an odious wrong.

Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemmings. Those actions are a great wrong yet Jefferson could also write that "all me are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." There is considerable irony in his authorship of those words but those words form the bedrock of all fights to realize every American's inalienable civil rights. We cannot pull down that larger than life statue of Jefferson in his Washington, D. C. Memorial without pulling down those words as well.

For our time and for a very long time we need to put away the Confederate battle flag, the statues and Dixie. Put them by, let them gather dust and be forgotten. Let the past finally be past. One day, however, let them be seen and heard again. Let the dust be removed when the white, black, brown or other child viewing those old symbols can look up at his or her grandfather who's just explained their meaning and say, "But, Grandpa, that was all wrong. Awfully wrong!" Then Grandpa can answer, "What a good, smart child you are! You make me so proud." Perhaps on that future day, should there be a band standing by, someone can quote the always generous Abraham Lincoln after receiving the news of Lee's surrender at Appomattox the day before, "I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard....I now request the band to favor me with its performance."

For the sake of our times and for all future times, let the old times there be forgotten so that we can one day remember them as part of history and not as part of current injustice.

A DECENT MAN

I have just heard the news that many have been expecting for months let alone the last few days, that Senator John McCain has died at age 81.

I am not a Republiscum nor am I a conservative. I am not of the alt-right neo-Fascist bent that now overwhelms the "Party of Lincoln". I'm not even a nice person much of the time. I have long paraphrased General Phillip Sheridan's horrible dictum about Native Americans by asserting that the only good Republican is a dead Republican. There are, after all, a lot of good, dead Republicans: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick, Elliott Richardson and now John McCain. Even as I was being horrid in saying and writing that, I knew that William Ruckelshaus and Pete McCloskey are still with us, good men both. I also could be pressed to say that there may well be good Republicans hidden amongst the neo-Fascists here and there in Red States, even in Texas. It is the shame of our nation that few if any of them have made it to public office. Tonight, however, I want to mourn a bit for a decent man who was also a Republican and a good Republican even in life, John McCain.

For most people John McCain's heroism centres around his captivity in a North Vietnamese prison fifty years ago. What makes McCain a hero to me is his deciding vote to save the Affordable Health Care Act. In that moment McCain rose above party, ideology and those who buy and sell politicians like they were pot roasts. With his thumbs down gesture he did his best to be a senator for all Americans, to save health care for millions of our people.

I don't believe in gods or devils. I don't believe in heaven or hell or a purgatory between. Having been brought up in a Methodist Church, I believe that the injunctions to care for one another, even the least of my brothers and sisters, in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Matthew represent the best way to live. But this night this old atheist, in reference to Senator McCain, finds himself recalling the story of the old woman and the onion in The Brothers Karamazov.

In that story a poor woman, starving, hollow-eyed comes upon the gate before the garden of a mean, pusillanimous old woman who's never been known to have a kind word for or show generosity to anyone. The poor beggar woman asks for food from the old householder who uncharacteristically relents and gives the beggar a small, shriveled, partly rotten onion. At length both the mean old woman and the blameless, poor beggar die. When the beggar woman arrives in heaven she stands before god and looks around for the old woman who gave her the onion that prolonged her life a little. God tells the beggar that the old woman is suffering in hell's lake of fire. The beggar pleads that the good act of giving her the onion should redeem the old woman. After considering this a moment god produces the very onion the beggar received long before. God then instructs the beggar woman to journey down to hell and drag the old woman up to heaven using the onion, the material symbol of that one good act. When the beggar woman reaches the shores of the lake in which all the damned are burning she holds out the onion to the old woman who grasps it. The beggar woman then begins her journey back to heaven drawing after her the old woman. When the rest of the damned see this they grab onto the old woman and to each other. Ultimately the beggar woman and her onion are dragging out of hell every damned soul ever condemned. Salvation looms for all sinners but at the last minute the old woman yells, "Get of! It's my onion!" In that instant the onion breaks apart and all the damned, including the old woman, fall back into their lake of fire.

I'm not sure who John McCain represents in that story. Perhaps he's both the beggar and the old woman but if this I am certain, that John McCain, at the critical moment for the American people, understood that it was not just his onion but that it belonged to us all. He thereby brought many of us a kind of salvation. John McCain was a decent man, a good man who has joined those many dead, good Republicans leaving us all the poorer for his passing and worse for those of his party that remain behind.

ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS

I, Oliver Laurence North, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

That is  the oath that Oliver North swore both verbally and in writing when he entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland and, indeed except for a change of name, the oath which every Federal employee swears upon joining Federal service. Please note that those swearing this oath are swearing their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. No one swears allegiance to a president, a flag, a senator, congressperson, or even Congress. Much less is there any reference to any religion or philosophy or political party. It is the Constitution of the United States to which we swear our allegiance, pledges to the flag not withstanding.

Yes, Oliver North swore that oath and then violated it. It is why Oliver Laurence North, the new president of the National Rifle Association is a traitor and a criminal, the very outlaw that the NRA for decades claimed to oppose having guns. By electing Oliver North to the presidency of the NRA that organization has finally acknowledged that their current management has no regard for the Constitution of the United States, the laws and traditions of the nation or anything but gun manufacturers' profits and neo-Fascist politics.

Let's look back at North's career to understand why he is a criminal and a traitor.

Before he left the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland North had already killed a fellow classmate in an auto accident. North served as a Second Lieutenant during the Vietnam War and received a number of decorations. He also appeared at the trial of Lance Corporal Randall Herrod four other soldiers accused in the murder of sixteen Vietnamese civilians in the village of San Thang. Thanks in part to North's efforts Herrod and one of the other private soldiers were acquitted of murder though three of the four under Herrod's command on that day were convicted.

Once his tour in Vietnam was over North became an instructor at the Marine training facility at Quantico, Virginia. With its proximity to Washington, D. C. and frequent visits by major political figures as well as his contacts with fellow Annapolis classmates and rabid anti-communism, North parlayed his career as an instructor into an appointment to the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan.

It was at the NSC that North received his appointment as Lieutenant Colonel and reached the infamous height of his career. Under National Security Advisors Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter and with the cooperation of CIA Director William Casey, North managed the secret and unlawful sale of arms to the Iranian government and appropriation of the cash proceeds to finance that vicious Contras of Nicaragua and the spill over of that conflict into El Salvador. North was famously a friend of Panamanian Dictator and drug smuggler, Manuel Noriega, who spent most of the time from his capture in 1991 until his death in 2017 in U. S., French and Panamanian jails for a variety of crimes including drug smuggling, fraud and various human rights violations including murder.

North escaped prison for his treason, obstruction of justice and documented lying to Congress through the aid of his many ultra-right wing and neo-Fascist pals as well as the good offices of the American Civil Liberties Union. He's gone on to attempt a political career and then settled down to live off the largess of Rupert Murdock and those other alt-right pals alluded to above. And now he's the president of the NRA. Is there any wonder that the NRA is now tainted by Russian Spy Maria Butina and questionable money flowing into the NRA's coffers and thence out to the political campaigns of a lot of neo-Fascist candidates including one Donald J. Trump? It seems that once a traitor, always a traitor. Once a funneler of dark money, always a crook. The fact that the outlaw North is the figurehead for the organization making sure that outlaws have guns is just too ironic and delicious to let pass without comment.

This fanatic ideologue, North, who betrayed his oath of office, betrayed the Constitution and his nation has no criminal conviction on his record yet the absence of a conviction does not expunge the crimes against the United States that he committed. Thousands of people nationwide now have the voting rights withheld because they were convicted of felonies of infinitely less consequence than the treasonous acts of Oliver North but North, having escaped prison on a technicality is a darling of the neo-Fascist right and is now the president of the National Rifle Association. It seems perfectly consonant with the election of North, no fan of American democracy, that the NRA is now being investigated for ties to the Russian government and its attempts to undermine American democracy.

I am not opposed to firearms ownership. I was once a member of the National Rifle Association. I joined in the early 1970s. I was a gun owner with a small collection of replica black powder and more modern cartridge weapons.In 1977 when the neo-fascist lunatics led by Wayne LaPierre among others took over the NRA I dropped my membership rather than be associated with their misinterpretation of the Second Amendment and ultra-right wing politics. The idea that even my small annual dues might finance a legislative program and a political philosophy that was anathema to me was something I could not brook.

Let me be clear here. I believe that there is a right to keep and bear arms...for self-protection, for hunting, target shooting, trap (clay target) shooting and similar sports. I believe that the National Guard and similar official units such as police forces have a right to keep and bear military style weapons but I think that the weapons available for personal protection and those used by sport shooter and those used by the military and police are and should be different. The former group has no need of weapons similar to the AR-15 or AK-47 designed for military use and that, in fact, those weapons are completely unsuitable for home defense or hunting. The NRA, on the other hand, shilling for the gun manufacturing industry, promotes such weapons despite their unsuitability.

Let's consider that issue of suitability for home defense and hunting for a moment. Following the murder  of twenty-seven very young children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 Vice-President Joe Biden was roundly derided for suggesting that a shotgun was a preferable weapon for home defense to any assault rifle. No one managed to point out that pre-1977 articles in the NRA's magazine, The American Rifleman, and other gun sports magazines had promoted shotguns as the optimal home defense weapon. I have written in detail about this in a now lost post so let me briefly explain the logic here again.

We have all heard of children and adults wounded or killed inside a home during a drive-by shooting whose target was someone out on a sidewalk in front of the home. People inside a house get killed or wounded as collateral damage because the high energy bullets from an assault rifle or high-powered handgun penetrate the siding, insulation and interior wallboard of the house with enough energy to kill or wound. Most shotgun pellets, on the other hand, have significantly lower energy and are more easily stopped or slowed to less lethal force by intervening obstacles. So let's consider a home owner roused in the night by the noise of an invader in his or her home. The homeowner wakes, bleary, uncertain of time or what's going on. This homeowner may have to find glasses, decide whether or not to turn on a light (don't) and then retrieve a weapon. In the dim light and uncertain situation the homeowner is as likely to shoot a child up for a drink of water as a violent intruder. Still, we will suppose that the children are still in bed across the hall.

So the homeowner is awakened by an intruder in the house. He hears through his sleep some odd sound and is suddenly awake. First let's consider "suddenly awake". I have been awakened by odd noises in the night. I have to fumble for my glasses, put them on and blink a few times or wipe my eyes to get anything like clear vision. I have to get out of bed. If there's an intruder on the stairs or in the hall I need to be as quiet as possible. I don't want to turn on a light because my eyes, adjusted now to the darkness, are going to be momentarily blinded by any light source, a light source that could signal the intruder to either flee or take some violent action. I will not know which until one or the other actually happens so keeping the light off gives me something of an advantage.

If I have a handgun or an assault rifle, I need to be sure of my target but can I be in the darkness and confusion of my sudden waking? Have I managed to get my glasses on or my vision cleared when a figure looms in the bedroom doorway? If I aim and miss the high energy bullet from my handgun or rifle is going to travel until it hits something substantial enough to stop it's flight. In most homes built since the 1950s the walls are going to be wood or metal framing covered with sheet rock and filled with insulation of one sort or another. Unless the bullet hits a wood or metal frame member, it is unlikely to lose enough energy to stop or even be significantly slowed. You have a significant chance of killing the child or other relative sleeping in the room across the hall with your miss with that single bullet. In a worst case scenario your stray bullet might even manage to kill or wound a neighbor in the next house.

Now you may say, "I'm an excellent shot. I keep my cool in stressful situations. I'll get the bad guy." I'm sure that you think so but we are not in an ideal situation and, given all the deficits in the scenario, all your preparation and composure may be insufficient. So let's consider an alternative.

Let's say that you have a shotgun and let's suppose that you have loaded it using some foresight. The first shell to fire is full of number 6 bird shot and the second shell contains 00 Buckshot. You see the intruder and fire the first barrel or shell and the 394 .106 diameter #6 pellets from your 1¼ ounce load in your 3 inch shot shell. Those pellets spread out rapidly forming a wide wall many of which will hit your intruder unless your estimate of your aiming skills are exceptionally overrated. Your chance of 1 of 394 pellets hitting your target is greatly increased as is the likelihood of many pellets hitting the intruder. Unless this person is seriously trying to kill you or insane, the intruder is likely to think better of this intrusion and get the hell out of your home at this point. However, if he doesn't leave you have a second shell loaded with 10 .33 diameter 00 (pronounced Double Ought) Buckshot pellets, a blast that is likely to rip your intruder apart.

But aren't a lot of those many pellets going to miss and go flying across the hall? Many of them will miss, especially the #6 pellets but the energy of those pellets is low enough that they are likely to be stopped by 2 or 3 layers of sheet rock plus insulation. Your family members or guests in your home are far less likely to be killed or injured by lower energy shotgun pellets than by high energy bullets from rifles or handguns. Even the much higher energy buckshot is likely to be stopped or rendered relatively harmless by all the intervening materials through which the pellets would pass before reaching someone in another room.

So why does the NRA promote assault rifles for home defense if they are not ideal and liable to kill or injure unintended targets? Because the NRA was taken over in 1977 by a group financed by ultra-right wing gun manufacturers who were primarily interested in promoting their weapons. In 1977 the Vietnam War was lost. The demand for assault rifles was very low but manufacturers had lots of factory space committed to making parts for and assembling such rifles. Convincing the gun owning population that these were appropriate weapons for hunting and home defense meant that the assembly lines for AR-15s and the like could remain active. Editing out the reference to a "well-regulated militia" in the Second Amendment was also key to this nefarious plan. These fanatics knew that no one in the general population would bother to read the documents from the 1790s relative to the adoption to that amendment.

Corporations have the best lawyers that money can buy. Gun Manufacturing corporations like, Colt, Ruger, Remington and Winchester amongst others have the best and most craven lawyers that money can buy.  Of course those corporations don't have to buy the worst and most craven lawyers directly. They can funnel money through the NRA, Gun Owners of America, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Second Amendment Foundation, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the National Association for Gun Rights. They can even buy members of The Federalist Society and Judges like the late, but not late enough, In-Justice Antonin Scalia and current Supreme Court In-Justices like Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.These bought and paid for shills for the firearms industry have managed to twist an amendment created in 1790 to protect the rights of states to maintain militias as a counter to excesses by a Federal standing army into an individual right to keep and bear arms which was never intended when the Bill of Rights was drafted.

For decades the NRA has promoted the bumper sticker slogan, "If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." Perhaps we now need a new bumper sticker. It should have a photo of North and the NRA seal with the slogan, "Guns aren't outlawed and now an outlaw has the NRA." Maybe throw in an image of Vladimir Putin applauding North too.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Not only have the neo-Nazis of the Donald Dunce Administration decided to use kidnapping children from their parents if those parents have the temerity to flee violence and disaster in their home countries and appear at our southern border, but they have gone further. They have ordered the staff at the detention centres to which these kidnapped children are taken not to pick up or hold or reassure or comfort the children in any way.

Donald Dunce insists that he's not responsible for these kidnappings but rather it's the fault of Congressional Democrats who won't kow-tow to him and his evil policies. Donald Dunce is a liar. That's well established but not the least so when he propagandizes that his policy is someone else's fault. To add to the obscenity of Donald Dunce's policy the detention and separation of these parents and children is a boondoggle shunting taxpayer money to Dunce's corporate friends who operate private prisons.

But let's look more closely at the policy of not having physical contact with these children. To look at it from an historical perspective allow me to take you back nearly eight centuries to the Sicilian Court of Frederick the Great Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, King od Germany, Italy, Burgundy and Sicily and titular King of Jerusalem. Frederick was known as a scholar and something of a scientist in his time. He conducted a number of experiments all of which were inspired by the religious beliefs of his day. One involved sealing a man inside a cask in which only one small hole had been drilled. The object of condemning this man to death by starvation in the cask was to see if observers could perceive the soul as it escaped through the hole.

However, the experiment that Donald Dunce's horrendous policy toward migrant children brings to mind is Frederick's attempt to discover which language god gave us first. To do this Frederick collected infants from their mothers immediately after birth. I doubt that it's recorded but the "collecting" certainly wasn't done from the nobles of his court or voluntarily from mothers. Emperors can order things with impunity, something that I'm sure Donald "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it" Dunces most fervently wishes for himself. These infants were given to a convent of trusted nuns. The nuns were allowed to change and bathe and feed the children but they were strictly forbidden to speak to the children or even coo over them. The nuns had to maintain total silence while with the babies and their contact with the infants was limited to those necessary functions already mentioned. What Frederick discovered was not the "natural, first language given by god" but he discovered that without the vocalizations that parents make with their babies and with the minimal contact require by necessity all of the babies died.

I doubt the Donald Dunce has ever heard of Frederick the Great Hohenstaufen. I suspect that he has a few advisors about him who would like to duplicate Frederick's experiments. He has an Attorney General who claims that he's following the Biblical teachings of St. Paul when the only authority in this nation is our Constitution as amended and interpreted by our courts. Frederick at the very least had the religiose ignorance of his time in the early 13th Century as an excuse for his barbaric behavior. Donald Dunce's ignorance is certainly a factor in his barbaric behavior but even more is his craven appeal to the fear, the xenophobia, racism and venality of his supporters. He whips up fear of poor people fleeing gang violence or murderous husbands who are no different in their desire for safety than any of us.

When Jesus says, in 16th Century translation, "suffer the little children to come unto me" he is telling his apostles to let the children come to him despite their unwillingness and reservations. In the dark, blinkered, malfunctioning minds of Donald Dunce, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen "suffer" has the more modern meaning which they are pursuing to the nth degree. Not only is their heartlessness unAmerican, it is inhumane and inhuman. It is they who need to suffer in the modern sense something that, hopefully will be true once a new Congress is seated.

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

So His Orangeness, our Prevaricator in Chief, Donald Dunce, has met with Kim Jong-un and everyone is puzzled by what Kim thought he would get out of this meeting. Being a pessimist I think I know and if in a few years this scenario comes to pass, remember that you heard it here first.

Kim Jong-un has had many conversations with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin either in person or by phone and he knows that the United States and Western Alliance (NATO) will not confront a nuclear armed adversary who swoops in and invades an adjoining nation. There's ample evidence in Putin's annexation of Crimea and his on-going war in Ukraine. As another example there's China's pre-nuclear annexation of Tibet. Kim also has been clued in to the fact that Trump is a moron who has no sense of history.

Given these facts Kim can go into this Singapore Summit meeting smiling and deferential to Trump who loves nothing more than having his ego massaged. Kim makes a nebulous promise to denuclearize. The Dunce, with visions of a Nobel Peace Prize clouding his vision, hears and sees whatever he wants to hear and see. With this unverifiable and unverified, imprecise crumb from Kim, Mr. Dunce asserts that he's gotten a whole loaf and decides that he can dispense with joint war games with the Republic of South Korea. Donald Dunce now also has an excuse to remove U. S. troops from Korea.

Kim is aware that Donald Dunce will not be around on the world stage much longer. We all hope that he'll be shuffled off by January 20, 2021 if he's not impeached and jailed before. Kim, if his cholesterol and blood pressure hold, will be North Korean dictator for a lot longer.

So the maneuvers that Donald Dunce considers "a provocation" end immediately. Troop withdrawals commence and continue. In the meantime Kim conducts no further missile tests. He explodes no more nuclear weapons. He smiles a lot and issues promises that he's working on disarming. The minefields in the Demilitarized Zone are uprooted, more by the departing Americans than by the North Koreans. Then one November 11th or, perhaps Christmas Day when all the American troops are out of South Korea and those in Japan are on holiday leave, the North Korean Army comes rolling into South Korea, captures Seoul and pushes south in a blitz kreig to capture Gwangju, Daegu and Pusan. Because Kim has a grip on history significant forces capture and hold the port of Inchon. Mobile missile batteries in Pusan are a short distance from the Japanese main island.

Donald Dunce or a successor decides to send troops to Japan and scramble bombers from Guam. However, the North Korean government issues an ultimatum that if so much as a Cessna takes off from Guam in the direction of Korea, a nuclear missile will obliterate Guam. Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand feel that they cannot take action against North Korea in the face of nuclear destruction and the hope that Kim's ambitions are limited to reunifying the Korean Peninsula. Despite a major influx of American troops, Japan, the former colonial power, hunkers down in fear of an invasion and the nuking of Tokyo. China offers to intercede with Kim in return for Japan's dropping of all claims to disputed islands between the two countries and Russia permanently asserts control of the northern Ryukyu Islands that it's held since 1945.

The end result is that the United States loses all influence in all of East Asia and extends its influence over India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and all of the mainland of Southeast Asia. Yet further, the United States is seen as a paper tiger. The East European NATO members leave that alliance and snuggle up to Russia as their protector. Germany, Austria and Italy once again find themselves the front line in Europe. The uneasy truces in the Balkan states breaks down and Russia intervenes as protector of the Slavic peoples of that fractious area.

The trade ties that China has established in what Donald Dunce has identified as the "shithole" countries of Africa make their relations with the United States more tenuous. Similarly the nations on the western shores of South America and Brazil find more interests in common with Kim's Chinese godfathers than with the United States. A world-wide alliance of pragmatism, fear and trade ties isolates the United States.

Into this dire situation will unquestionably step some narcissistic demagogue in the mold of Donald Dunce - a Ted Cruz, a Sean Hannity, an Oliver North, some televangelist, there are too many to list - offers to save the nation as long as Congress and the Courts grant him extraordinary powers. He will, of course, be truly in the mold of Donald Dunce, a Manchurain Candidate controlled by Moscow and/or Beijing. The new world order won't be United Nations black helicopters as the loonies of the far right fear. No. It will come from the loonie far right whose corrupt business deals, like Donald Dunce's, have placed him under the thumb of Russian and /or Chinese masters.

Having spun out this nightmare scenario, a nightmare that could far too easily come true, it is appropriate to note that Donald Dunce has abrogated the Iran nuclear agreement because it only stops Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for ten years. During those years Iran agreed to submit to the most stringent inspection regime ever imposed on any nation. For Donald Dunce a multi-nationally enforced agreement made by his predecessor was insufficient but an ill defined promise in a document that he and Chairman Kim signed after brief discussions is an iron clad reason to clear our military out of South Korea. Can we agree  that calling this fraud Donald Dunce is not pejorative? It is simply fact.

P. S. Donald Dunce came home and, as he is wont to do, sent out the tweet that "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea." Thus Prime Minister Chamberlain...I mean Donald Dunce...has met with Chancellor Hitl...sorry, Chairman Kim...and declared "Peace in our time"...with a probably similar result

Our great observer of humanity, Mark Twain, gets credit for a line he might well  have written but didn't that, "History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes." The philosopher George Santayana did observe, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It seems that both observations apply in this case.