"Every male among you shall be circumcised."

     The old folks usher the young folks in.
     That's how it is, how it should be. 
     The parents do the heavy lifting: the nine-month gestation. The financial planning and free-floating worry. Decorate the nursery. Buy the special furniture. Gather the tiny clothes. Trade off the midnight feedings. 
      But for ceremonial welcome-to-the-world duties, we gray beards take the stage. The grandmas and the great aunts fuss in the kitchen.
      To pass the chalice from our big veiny hands to their chubby little ones.
      I went to a bris last Friday. The first ceremonial circumcision I had been to since my younger son's, 22 years ago.
      We Jews don't follow many commandments anymore, at least not my variety. But we do follow this one, scrupulously. Any why not? God is quite clear about it, in Genesis 17:10: "This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between Me and you and thy seed after thee: every male among you shall be circumcised."
      He says exactly when it should be done: eight days after the birth.
      My wife's sister's daughter's son. Making me ... what? The great uncle. Some say "grand uncle" but that sounds weird. And he's my ... second cousin? Grand nephew? I think I'l stick with plain old nephew. Sounds better.
      My role was limited to bringing the deli tray, a task my wife and I leapt to do, the cost happily shared, I should point out, by my brother-in-law Alan, above, and his wife Cookie. The tray courtesy of Kaufman's, of course, on Dempster Road in Skokie. Such whitefish. To. Die. For.
      The ceremony spoke of tradition, of thousands of years, going back to Abraham. An unbroken chain to ancient times, something the world would view with awe if it weren't, you know, Jews doing it.
      I asked if the mohel—a retired pediatric surgeon—if she minded if I use her name. She didn't. Though we discussed the intrusion of the online insane, the anti-circumcision crowd. Those who view the practice as an enormous wrong, in their lives if not the entire world. Or, as Thoreau put it, who “mistake their private ail for an infected atmosphere.” I told her I used to receive No-Circ News, a horror sheet of circumcision disasters (There's an echo of it online). For years. With that in mind, I made an editorial decision, and drew the veil around all concerned. The mohel knows who she is. The parents know who they are. The baby will know who he is. And I know who I am. We're Jews. We do Jewish stuff, more or less, to a greater or lesser degree, as suits our inclination. 
     Ancestors came to mind. My Grandpa Irwin. Almost 40 years dead. I only remember one thing, a single coherent thought, he ever said to me, but it is germane to the topic at hand:  
      "Who gets paid more," Grandpa Irv once asked, "a rabbi or a mohel?"
     "Gosh grandpa," I said, smiling in anticipation "I don't know. Who gets paid more: the rabbi or the mohel?"
     "The rabbi gets a better salary," he deadpanned, in his slight Polish accent. "But the mohel gets all the tips."
      Not bad wordplay for whom English was a second language.
     I also thought of Uncle Phil. My wife's father's uncle. He lived in CHA senior housing on Diversey—so much for rich Jews running the world—and it was our job to bring him to family holidays. Five foot tall, maybe. Sweater vests, well filled out. Thick, smudged glasses. A serious underbite. Ran a marginal lamp business for years. We visited it once, to pick out a lamp as a wedding present. A basement maze on a sketchy section of Lake Street. The setting for a Stephen King story. Piles of lamp parts, brass rods wrapped in 30-year-old newspapers. Dark and wet with square holes that seemed to plunge into subterranean pools. And a gaunt cat somehow down there. I thought of rescuing it on the spot, then decided to leave well enough alone. 
     His wife, Mary, a lovely school teacher, had passed away; his daughter and grandkids lived in other cities. So every Rosh Hashana, every Thanksgiving, every Hanukkah, every Passover, Uncle Phil was there, often because we would pick him up. Although I preferred he wait for us downstairs—once I went up to his apartment. A nest on par with the factory. The thought of ending up in a place like that ... 
     We'd drive Uncle Phil to Skokie. Once he got settled in the car, he'd begin the same speech. "Are you still writing for the Sun-Times?" he'd ask. "That miserable rag...!"
    And off he'd go, the same tirade. I wish I remembered the rest, but I don't. Related to the paper's politics. Uncle Phil was something of a communist. I'm not sure he grasped that I worked there.
    "One of these days," I'd tell my wife, afterward. "I'm going to pull over to the side of the highway, reach over, open his door, and push him out."
     But I never did. And I don't want to sell him short. I'm sure, in his day, he was a sport, in a double-breasted suit, making a killing in the lamp trade. But I did not know him in his day. Which brings us to how Uncle Phil fit into the bris of this young man, now in his second week of life.
      It was this thought:
      I'm going to be his Uncle Phil.
      Meaning, I'm going to be the old guy at the end of the table, tolerated but ignored, when possible, vigorously chewing my food, mouth open, delivering too loud opinions too often, shouting my unwelcome, self-referential observations through a spray of spittle, not perceiving the eye rolls. A supernumerary in the corner, filling out the family scene. Uncle Phil never gave up on that lamp factory, was ready to draw anybody into the lamp making business. I'll probably have my own version of that going on someday. "That will be a fine vignette for the book I'm working on!" Yes yes Uncle Neil, I'm sure it will...
     The first three or four times that thought—"I'm Uncle Phil"—came to me, I batted it away with a cold shiver of dread. But now I've begun to accept it. Even embrace it. What choice is there? 


     
     
     

Joy on this most Jewish of holidays, Christmas

     Merry Christmas!
     Am I handing Donald Trump a victory by saying that? He seems to think so.
     “They didn’t want to let you say “Merry Christmas,’” he told students in Florida last Saturday.
     Trump doesn’t say who “they” are — liberals, Democrats, maybe Jews — but the villains were defeated, thanks to Trump, who crowed: “They’re all saying Merry Christmas again.”
     I sure am. Then again, I never stopped. Exactly 15 years ago I also began a column “Merry Christmas,” reacting to the Republican victory dance celebrating reelection of George W. Bush. The logic seemed to be, with power secure, it was time to dial back all this diversity nonsense.
     The genesis of the issue bears repeating. In the late 20th century, certain public institutions — schools and stores, mostly — realized at Christmas that a significant percentage of their students or customers were Jews or Muslims or other non-Christmasy sorts. Rather than hold a Christmas Concert that ignores their existence, they expanded it into a big-tent Holiday Concert.
     This is perceived as an insult by certain Christians who feel they must manifest their dominance in all things at all times. Clutching at themselves, falling to he ground, writhing and weeping and emitting defiant bleats of “Merry Christmas” has became a December tradition. Nobody cries like a bully.
     This proved a dilemma to people such as myself, who not only don’t mind saying “Merry Christmas” but kinda like it, as a Dickens-ish bit of winter cheer.
     I could add “and Happy Hanukkah” — the fourth night is Wednesday — but Jews don’t really expect to be included. Or maybe that’s just me. I always cringed at the token Hanukkah song jammed at the end of the Holiday Concert. “I Have a Little Dreidl.” Bleh. Not exactly “Silent Night,” is it?

     For the past few years, I worried “Merry Christmas” would be irredeemably ruined by Trump, weaponized from a jolly holiday greeting into a belligerent blast of political toxicity, half “Sieg Heil,” half “fuck you.” But that hasn’t happened. Yet.

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Flashback 2004: Merry ... well, you KNOW

Christmas Card by Carl Krenek (Met)

     Donald Trump again this week resurrected the whole "Merry Christmas" canard—the daft notion that political correctness has somehow stopped Christians from uttering the words. Of course taking personal credit for freeing the faithful from their chains. Not only is it utter BS but, in keeping with all things Trump, it isn't even original utter BS. I addressed this non-issue ... let's see, 15 years ago. But the holidays are nothing if not a time of tradition, so let's revisit that column, from 2004, back when the bloody shirt was being waved by triumphant Bushies tired of spoiling their festivities by having to nod at the lesser creeds. If you notice, I seem fairly sympathetic with the Merry Christmas crowd: it just shows how 15 years of belligerent Fox News hectoring can wear a man down. This ran back when the column filled an entire page. I've left in the original subheads. I also left in the last two items, poignant as they are, since they refer to two aspects now almost unimaginable: first, a bookstore in the Loop and second to a group of colleagues I know well enough to josh with.

Opening shot
     Merry Christmas!
     I can say that, right? I mean, with Christmas Eve tonight, it seems apt. I don't think it's a negation of all my readers who are Muslim cab drivers (or college professors), or fierce atheists or, like me, Jewish.
     I suppose there might be some mild insult, the oblivious low-level sting of a co-worker trying to feign interest in your life by tossing off a breezy "How are the wife and kids doing?" when you in fact aren't married and don't have any children.
     But really, I think most non-Christians can take "Merry Christmas" in the spirit it is tendered, as a generalized expression of goodwill and not a demand that we start going to midnight mass or drinking wassail or whatever the faithful are required to do. I've said "Have a great weekend" to people I know are miserable, and I don't expect them to hate me for it. Maybe they do.
     I prefer "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays," which is too generic, too much akin to "Have a nice day."
     A public sphere crowded with religious practice is probably better than one scrubbed clean. In the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, we had a creche and a menorah at the intersection of Shermer and Walters and the heavens did not crack. If, in a few years, they are joined by a star and crescent, a seated Buddha, and a black pentagram, it might be a bit crowded, but life will muddle on.
     Frankly, I'm glad a bit of the Christmas is flowing back into the generic holiday festivals. When I grew up, we sang Christmas carols in school, and I satisfied myself with humming the parts that violated my creed. "Mmm-mmm the sav-ior is born. . . ."
     That's too passive for some people nowadays, who need to exercise every iota of their rights. First, by scouring the trappings of Christianity out of the public domain and now, in the wake of Bush's victory, with triumphant Christians trying to put it all back.
     The pendulum swings, and I'm not too worried about it because we are a blended culture and becoming more so every day. As smug as people might feel getting the living Nativity scene back into the Holiday Pageant, they are setting the stage to be less pleased next Ramadan when a bunch of students want to present their ProphetFest.
     It all works out in the wash. Sniping over these differences is what Americans do instead of killing each other. So far, at least.

Do-it-yourself pundit

     Some stories are too ripe for plucking, and rather than demean myself by hitting such a slow pitch, I thought I would walk you through the pundit process so you can see how it works.
     1) Take a fact: A Texas lady spent $50,000 to clone her cat.
     2) Conjure the standard reactions:
           a — crazed rich pet owners have no sense of balance;
           b — $50,000 is a lot of money and could be used for good causes;
           c — all cats are more or less the same.
      3) Dismiss those initial reactions as ordinary stuff and come up with three new reactions based on inverting the initial reactions:
            a — rich people indulge themselves in all sorts of stupid ways, so why is a cloned cat any worse than, say, a $50,000 lithograph?
            b — the choice never is between dumb indulgences and worthy causes; nobody, rich or poor, wonders whether to take a Caribbean vacation or help the needy.
            c — enough people cherish cats and view each as a distinct personality, superior to humans, that they will make life an e-mail hell for a week, and it's better to let the entire matter drop.
     See? It's tougher than it looks.

Bookseller becomes H'wood hunk

     I'm always prepping people for disasters that don't happen. When Josh Brent, the son of famed Chicago bookseller Stuart Brent, announced he was quitting the book business — he helped his brother Adam run the last independent bookstore in the Loop, Brent Books on Washington  and taking his good looks to Los Angeles to become a movie star, I felt obligated to recount my own Los Angeles experience, three of the most unhappy months in my entire life.
     Don't be afraid to give up and come back home, I told him. If you end up living in your car, as I did, remember that Chicago is always ready to take you back.
     Wasted breath, as it turns out. Brent begins filming soon on Sam Mendes' movie of Anthony Swofford's Marine memoir, "Jarhead." A bit of type casting, because Brent was in the Israeli Army and is one of those buff guys who looks as if he could punch you in such a way that you'd be dead before you hit the floor. You read it here first.

Don't be deceived by mild manner

     Does the above count as Hollywood gossip? I worried it would, and that Bill Zwecker would rush storming into my office, waving a crumpled newspaper.
     "Who the hell do you think you are!?!" he'd rage. "I'll carve your heart out and serve it to the dog."
     Not that the real Bill, my good friend and the most amicable of men, would ever say or even think such a thing.
     But I have a tendency to entertain myself by imagining my colleagues in uncharacteristic situations. I couldn't write the opening item about Christmas, for instance, without conjuring up religion columnist Cathleen Falsani, eyes aflame, grabbing me by the collar and hoisting me off the floor. "Leave Jesus alone," she hisses. "He's mine, do you hear me, you God-denying sack of perfidy? Mine!!!"
     Of course, the most fun of all is calm, quiet, dignified, self-contained and highly respected radio critic Rob Feder. You can't imagine the hours I've spent entertaining myself by placing him into the foulest debauches I can conceive. Just this morning, I was walking along, cackling aloud, for some reason picturing Rob in a loosely tied yellow silk robe, slumped in one of the smokey wooden bins at his corner opium den, touching the end of a glowing stick to the tarry chunk of pen-yan in the bowl of his long pipe.
     I don't know if you find that funny. But I'm laughing even as I write this. That's probably a bad sign but heck, it's Christmas, and diversions beckon. I'm off all next week, but will catch you again in the new year. Drive safely.

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 24, 2004

Trump backers don’t see what they can’t see

Evanston mural, by Shawn Bullen

     Bees can see ultraviolet light. Betcha didn’t know that. Their eyes—and bees have five of them—process wavelengths humans can’t, meaning bees can literally see colors that people can’t imagine, detecting patterns on flowers beyond human perception.
     If we were to consider the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, with big loping radio waves at one end, and frantic tiny gamma waves at the other, the range that people can see—visible light—is a small section. We exist in a sea of information we don’t know is there.
     No shame in that. Everybody doesn’t see something. Most things. And when I step back from the American political scene— like the restful, stay-at-home vacation last week—it’s a blessed relief to focus on other concerns. I tracked the impeachment of Donald Trump out of the corner of one eye, and didn’t watch a second of the proceedings.
     So much buzzing. So much noise and frantic activity. Very hive like, although that’s an insult to bees, famous for their industry and courage: stout-hearted warriors “in their waxen kingdoms,” as Virgil calls them in “Georgics.”
     I didn’t watch the impeachment because I already saw, in stark relief, what House Democrats were laboriously trying to establish: Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine trying to blackmail its president into announcing a sham investigation into Joe Biden and his son. That isn’t a murky mystery. The facts are right there. Trump himself admitted it.
     Yet none of this is perceived by Trump supporters. Point directly at the treachery and they stare blankly, as if gazing into empty space. Or they see a mirage: Bill Clinton spinning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, as if that’s somehow relevant. They look at Donald Trump and see a Christ-like figure. “The Chosen One” in former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry’s term

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Things That Christianity Was Okay With

The Orator, by Magnus Zeller (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

     Like you, I am shocked, shocked at Evangelical Christianity's continued support of Donald Trump, in apparent contravention of almost every bedrock belief they otherwise claim to hold dear and demand other, non-Trump individuals rigorously adhere to. A puzzling departure from their supposed values, which the sharply-worded condemnation of Trump by Christianity Today last week is more the exception that proves the rule. A yelp of dissent interrupts the steady ululating of praise for the beloved leader, himself Christlike in their eyes. "The chosen one," as Rick Perry called Trump, half Peter, half Obi-Wan Kenobi.
     Although. I can't help but wonder: how much of a surprise should this really be? Is Christian support of our craven, cruel corrupt, criminal—and those are just the Cs—president really such a departure? Not when we think of American history, which does serve as a reality check to those who pause to consult it. Look at history, and suddenly this becomes, not an exception, but par for the course.
     The liar, bully, fraud and newly-impeached traitor who leads our country is not the first shameful enormity that official Christendom has given its enthusiastic approval. 
     A partial, utterly deniable list of Things that Christianity Was Okay With, culled from American history:

      The slaughter of Native-Americans.
      The enslavement of black people. 
      The subjugation of women.
      Irrational hatred toward immigrants.
      Anti-Semitism in all forms.
      Colonialist conquest of weaker nations.
      Indifference in the face of suffering of non-white groups.
      Denial of science.
      Ridicule of religions other than Christianity. 
      Censorship of literature.
      Suppression of the arts.
      Sexual ignorance.
      Thwarting efforts of black people to achieve civil rights.
      Fighting their attempts to live in white communities.
      Denying them the chance to work at good jobs.
      Squelching of advances in medicine.
      Control of women's reproductive rights.
      A grim, joyless view of sex, often for themselves but especially for others. 
      Aversion to dancing, and many kinds of music.
      Hostility toward gays.
      And toward lesbians, transgender folks, and anyone straying from rigid gender norms.
      Hostility toward any non-Christian religion, particularly Islam.
      Rejection of anything that smacks of magic, spiritualism, or any myth other than Christian myth. 
       America as an inclusive society. 

     I'm sure I've left a few out. Since I can hear the howl before it goes up, I should point out that a) there always was, like Christianity Today, a small element of dissent, like the abolitionist movement, that shouldn't be forgotten, and b) my own team, Judaism, certainly has its share of stunning moral lapses, lack of sympathy toward the plight of the Palestinians leaping to mind. 
     Neither of which, however, alters my main point one iota, so don't pretend they do. 
    
    

Flashback 2000: A tough thing not to watch.

Doing radio with Bob Sirott and Marianne Murcianoo in 2014.

   

     There was good news and bad news on the Chicago radio front this week. The bad news was that veteran news reporter Mary Dixon was out after nearly 30 years at WXRT, a station that has so far largely avoided the glozing hand of corporate nincompoops, but now risks being homogenized into the same generic, placeless pap that takes up so much of the dial.

    The good news is that Bob Sirott is back on the air, according to my pal Robert Feder, mornings on WGN—AM720. That has to be welcome by anybody who likes knowledgeable Chicago broadcasting by somebody who has been around. It made me think of this column, from 2000, when I first began to get to know Bob, as far as he can be known, at the party for another Chicago icon. Then, he had just been pushed out by Fox—there are many ups and downs in broadcasting—and I'm glad to see Bob ascendant again. 

     I don't watch much television. This earns me endless grief from my colleagues, who live for TV, and often on TV, too.

     The popularity of television baffles me. More people read an issue of the Sun-Times than watch any given local newscast. Yet a television reporter walks in the room, and people just swoon. They climb over themselves to say hello.
     Maybe I'm jealous. Me, I walk in a room and people, well, they continue to do whatever it is they're doing.
     That's why I don't go to parties much. I don't know anybody and nobody knows me, and there's nothing like a party to highlight that. For instance, about six weeks ago, I found myself at Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz's 95th birthday party. The judge is a Chicago icon, whose career stretches from the Roaring '20s to the present day, a close friend of the Daley family. Somebody whose parties you attend whether you like parties or not, just to touch the hem of Chicago history and Chicago greatness.
     After exchanging greetings with the Birthday Boy, I had to find a way to politely pass the time before the festivities began—the mayor was on his way to make an impromptu speech, and one mustn't miss the chance to witness one of those.
     I tried hanging with Sen. Paul Simon. He's a colleague now, with his own column, so I figured we could, like all journalists, hole up in a corner and gripe about how underappreciated we are. But Simon skillfully ditched me. I wandered, scanning faces, trying to build up courage and momentum to break into the phalanx of admirers around Christie Hefner. But my will failed me.
     Finally, Bob Sirott waltzed in with a camera crew. Now, I'm not friends with Sirott, but I did recognize him from TV—even I know who he is—so I introduced myself and inquired about his new baby. I also asked him why he was there. There was no warehouse fire or crying mom, none of the things that normally attract TV interest.
     Sirott said something I thought of this week, when Fox 32 gave him the heave-ho in favor of some guy from New York. He said, and I won't quote him directly since I didn't write it down, but something along the lines that Judge Marovitz is a civic treasure and he wanted to be sure to tape something at his party.
     As I said, I'm not a big television watcher, so I might be going out on a limb here. But I bet you that the average TV personality has no idea who Judge Marovitz is and wouldn't go to his birthday party if they did. Sure, there are a few Chicago stalwarts—Carol Marin and Mike Flannery over at Channel 2, for instance—who know of the judge, just as they know it is Soldier Field.
     But the rest blow into town from Phoenix, take an apartment at Presidential Towers, and churn out stories about O'Hare delays and cosmetic surgery until their time here is up and they move on to Portland.
     Help me here. Does it make sense, when the ratings slide, to toss out the Chicago institution, the guy who knows the place, who has lived here all his life and been on the air since I was in grade school? And in his chair place some newly birthed nobody, wet from the womb, in the charmed notion that he will somehow suck in the viewers?
     I'm not buddies with Sirott; I'm not going to bat for a pal. But I felt saddened to see him tossed over the rail, and I don't even watch TV. How must the viewers feel?
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 3, 2000

You can't draw Republicans out of a fantasy with facts

    The first question at Thursday night's debate of Democratic presidential candidates was a good one. A lot of Americans, PBS's Judy Woodruff asked at the start of the sixth and final debate, do not perceive the need to impeach and remove President Trump: what are they going to do to convince those Americans otherwise? It cut to the heart of the problem—a lot of Americans like this guy, despite everything he does and says, so even if—please God—Trump is voted out of office in 2020, then the Republicans will just revert to the fanatical opposition they were during the Obama years, dragging their feet at every improvement, pining for power to be returned so they can get back to dragging this country back to the Mayberry 1958 box diorama going on in their heads. 
     Six of the seven Democratic candidates punted, regurgitating their various talking points. Only Andrew Yang even tried to answer, but his response—we're going to address policies that matter to them and eventually the scales will fall from their eyes, and damn the media for focusing on this impeachment nonsense—was infused with the wishfulness that trips up Democrats so much. 
     “What we have to do is we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment, which unfortunately strikes many Americans like a ballgame where you know what the score is going to be and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place," he said. "The more we act like Donald Trump is the cause of all our problems, the more Americans lose trust that we can actually see what's going on in our communities and solve those problems.”   
     Which could work, were Trump backed with fanatical frenzy because he was solving the problems of white America, other than the problem of living in a fearful fantasy world and being desperate for a strongman messiah to tell them everything's okay. No clever twist on clean energy is going to sway those people. What Democrats need is a counter image of their own for everyone to gather behind. I don't think promising policies will do the trick. Obamacare was an important, necessary change in America's policy toward health insurance, and it was still maniacally opposed by the people it would help most, the way areas of Britain that most benefited from the European Union were also the places most dead set against it. The sad truth is that much of America lives in a Fox-fueled alternative reality where no exciting new policy is going to reach them. 
     That's the bad news. The good news is the Democrats don't need to reach them all, only to peel off a few percent and lure them away from the newly-impeached liar, bully and traitor leading our country to ruin. It's possible. But pretending the deep schism in America doesn't exist, or that the fact-averse can be lured across the divide if only you bait your hook with the right big wriggling juicy fact, strikes me as unhelpful, at best, and at worst the kind of losing strategy that, well, keeps Democrats losing. The key to overcoming nearly half of America lost in a dreamworld is not to enter a dreamworld of our own.