The owners of the Empire State Building refuse to honor Mother Teresa, but saw no problem with honoring with lights on Bastille Day, Frank Sinatra, Fay Wray (she is the actress who was wrestling with a monkey on top of the Empire State Building), Queen Elizabeth, the Knicks, the Rangers, the Belmont Stakes, Rutgers' womens' basketball team, Microsoft Windows 95 and The Simpson's Movie. But they have no time for Mother Teresa.
The Lord put 10 plagues on Eqypt. Number 8 was a plague of locusts.
Three weekends ago the press reported that there was an infestation of bedbugs in the Empire State Building that began in the mens' locker room.
The 9th plague was darkness.
In the morning's paper last weekend, there was a report that the city council approved the building of a 1250' high skyscraper near the Empire State Building. It would throw its shadow over the Empire State Building.
The moral is: Don't mess with Mother Teresa, she has another 8 plagues up her sleeve.
Address at a rally at the Empire State Building
August 26, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
The 'Make Women Disposable' Law
As goes the effort at social commentary sired by Cahn/vanHeusen by way of Frank Sinatra,
Love and marriage, love and marriage
Goes together like a horse and carriage,
But sometimes people want to shoot the horse and burn the carriage, which is what Governor Patterson is about to do with a stroke of his pen.
A new divorce bill has passed both houses of what can charitably be described as our state legislature. It only waits the virtually (this time a back room deal did not even have to be made) assured blessing of our governor to become law. The law will make it easier to get out of a marriage than out of a magazine subscription.
One spouse, usually the husband, has merely to sign an affidavit that his marriage has irretrievably broken down. Since it takes two to tango or at least to agree that it has not broken down, the couple are - give or take a few legal papers (for which, undoubtedly the lawyers will be generously paid) - divorced. In time, the law may come to be called The Lawyer’s Relief Act Of 2010.
All the descriptions of the law make it sound good and modern. But is it really? It is a bit similar to a description given, in another context by John Randolph of Roanoke, [It is] like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, shined and stunk. The law, as hyped, glitters, glimmers and shimmers but when examined closely, is odiferous.
This law would permit an older, long married and rich man to unceremoniously dump his wife. Sure, for being thrown under the bus, she will receive money, perhaps lots of money. But money is a peculiar commodity. The more you have of it, the cheaper it is to you. And with all the impedimenta of science, its practitioners have still not been able to effectuate the transmogrification of money into the lost years of a woman’s life.
At the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, women would lose all power to obtain a better settlement from a husband who has a similar emotional attachment to his wife similar to that which he enjoys with an empty, crumpled package of cigarettes he tosses into a waste basket.
The law will surely raise the divorce rate since the human condition is such that if you allow something to be done with less difficulty than previously, more people will do it. Result: more disposable women.
The proponents of the law point to the fact that New York is the only state to require grounds for divorce. There never was a worse reason for a law than everybody else has one. This may be a reason to buy a new necktie, dress or computer, but not for something that will affect the lives of, ultimately millions of people. Justice Holmes used the word “revolting” to describe this kind of decision-making.
What about the fact that after thirty years of taking a contrary position, the women’s bar associations now, like Paul on the road to Damascus who saw the light of the Lord, suddenly realize that the present law prevents suffering women from obtaining a divorce? Nonsense! There are presently five “fault” grounds for divorce and additionally a “non-fault” ground.
There are, of course, “good” divorces, ones that should take place and that are appropriate on both a societal and personal basis. But divorce is not nor was meant to be a remedy for ennui, boredom or the desire to trade a spouse in for a newer model.
For the last two thousand years, marriage has been treated as a societal good and divorce a state of grace not to be desired. Jesus taught, “Let those who are for putting away their wives consider what would become of themselves, if God dealt with them in a like manner.” Still sounds like pretty good advice!
Raoul Felder
“The Good Divorce”
Pub. date January 2011
St. Martins Press
Love and marriage, love and marriage
Goes together like a horse and carriage,
But sometimes people want to shoot the horse and burn the carriage, which is what Governor Patterson is about to do with a stroke of his pen.
A new divorce bill has passed both houses of what can charitably be described as our state legislature. It only waits the virtually (this time a back room deal did not even have to be made) assured blessing of our governor to become law. The law will make it easier to get out of a marriage than out of a magazine subscription.
One spouse, usually the husband, has merely to sign an affidavit that his marriage has irretrievably broken down. Since it takes two to tango or at least to agree that it has not broken down, the couple are - give or take a few legal papers (for which, undoubtedly the lawyers will be generously paid) - divorced. In time, the law may come to be called The Lawyer’s Relief Act Of 2010.
All the descriptions of the law make it sound good and modern. But is it really? It is a bit similar to a description given, in another context by John Randolph of Roanoke, [It is] like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, shined and stunk. The law, as hyped, glitters, glimmers and shimmers but when examined closely, is odiferous.
This law would permit an older, long married and rich man to unceremoniously dump his wife. Sure, for being thrown under the bus, she will receive money, perhaps lots of money. But money is a peculiar commodity. The more you have of it, the cheaper it is to you. And with all the impedimenta of science, its practitioners have still not been able to effectuate the transmogrification of money into the lost years of a woman’s life.
At the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, women would lose all power to obtain a better settlement from a husband who has a similar emotional attachment to his wife similar to that which he enjoys with an empty, crumpled package of cigarettes he tosses into a waste basket.
The law will surely raise the divorce rate since the human condition is such that if you allow something to be done with less difficulty than previously, more people will do it. Result: more disposable women.
The proponents of the law point to the fact that New York is the only state to require grounds for divorce. There never was a worse reason for a law than everybody else has one. This may be a reason to buy a new necktie, dress or computer, but not for something that will affect the lives of, ultimately millions of people. Justice Holmes used the word “revolting” to describe this kind of decision-making.
What about the fact that after thirty years of taking a contrary position, the women’s bar associations now, like Paul on the road to Damascus who saw the light of the Lord, suddenly realize that the present law prevents suffering women from obtaining a divorce? Nonsense! There are presently five “fault” grounds for divorce and additionally a “non-fault” ground.
There are, of course, “good” divorces, ones that should take place and that are appropriate on both a societal and personal basis. But divorce is not nor was meant to be a remedy for ennui, boredom or the desire to trade a spouse in for a newer model.
For the last two thousand years, marriage has been treated as a societal good and divorce a state of grace not to be desired. Jesus taught, “Let those who are for putting away their wives consider what would become of themselves, if God dealt with them in a like manner.” Still sounds like pretty good advice!
Raoul Felder
“The Good Divorce”
Pub. date January 2011
St. Martins Press
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
MOTHER’S DAY
Mothers travel the landscape of life starting as the centerpiece of our lives to becoming the butts of jokes (in the history of the world were there ever father-in-law jokes?), to becoming a final way station on the road to endless nothingness: a place where grown children make obligatory visits with squalling broods of grandchildren in tow on occasional Sunday afternoons (unless it is good golf weather). As a young medical student, working in an innercity hospital, I was surprised at the number of women in labor, who cried out for their mothers in an assortment of languages – never a husband, lover or father. And yet, from Kipling (If I were damned of body and soul/ I know whose prayers would make me whole /) to Georgie Jessel (God’s gift from above/ A real unselfish love/), to the drivel contained in a million Mother’s Day cards, whose purchase sadly, is usually nothing more than an inexpensive assuage of guilt where she is praised and raised to sanitized sainthood.
The law protects children from unfit mothers, but short of that they can come in all sizes and temperaments, good and bad and even some who are lousy cooks.
Although, it may be true that the ghost of every judge’s mother walks the courthouse corridors, the law, in its “majesty equality” treats her as an equal with fathers in matters of custody. Unfortunately, equality is often a step downward. Obviously, there are mothers whose temperament, sanity or judgment would render them unfit to mother a Pekinese. But there are also fathers who use the threat of a custody fight as a kind of Vergeltung Waffen to terrorize a mother into not pursuing the alimony, maintenance or child support to which she would be otherwise entitled.
Until the scientists are able to replace the years of a mother’s life devoted to her children in the same currency of time, money itself is a cheap and paltry currency…particularly if a man has a lot of it.
Researchers, in their quest to reduce things to scientific equations believe that the love between mother and child is the result of a complex cocktail of hormones, Oxytocin, Prolactin, endorphins, Pregnenolone and assorted chemical relatives. But that still does not explain those birthing women in the hospital crying for their mothers, nor a mother’s toil year after year, nor the self-sacrifices, nor the doing withouts. So, until these things can be explained away by chemistry, I’ll tell my kids to keep buying Mother’s Day cards, trite and awful of expression they may be.
The law protects children from unfit mothers, but short of that they can come in all sizes and temperaments, good and bad and even some who are lousy cooks.
Although, it may be true that the ghost of every judge’s mother walks the courthouse corridors, the law, in its “majesty equality” treats her as an equal with fathers in matters of custody. Unfortunately, equality is often a step downward. Obviously, there are mothers whose temperament, sanity or judgment would render them unfit to mother a Pekinese. But there are also fathers who use the threat of a custody fight as a kind of Vergeltung Waffen to terrorize a mother into not pursuing the alimony, maintenance or child support to which she would be otherwise entitled.
Until the scientists are able to replace the years of a mother’s life devoted to her children in the same currency of time, money itself is a cheap and paltry currency…particularly if a man has a lot of it.
Researchers, in their quest to reduce things to scientific equations believe that the love between mother and child is the result of a complex cocktail of hormones, Oxytocin, Prolactin, endorphins, Pregnenolone and assorted chemical relatives. But that still does not explain those birthing women in the hospital crying for their mothers, nor a mother’s toil year after year, nor the self-sacrifices, nor the doing withouts. So, until these things can be explained away by chemistry, I’ll tell my kids to keep buying Mother’s Day cards, trite and awful of expression they may be.
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