Baseball, Debt, Forgiving the Goons and Making Sense of the Goofy New World Order - Michaek Moriarty on Point

Wazzit Say? 

Sumpin aboud . . .Exercisin Yer Free Will . . .don't cost nutttin.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense: - Alexander Pope

 The measure the greatness of all other books against the greatest literary backdrop of all-time, the Bible, and I find with Joyce's Ulysses, the Bible doesn't even come close. If you're a writer, and you haven't read Ulysses, that fact is probably apparent in your writing  . . .
Joyce would have said as much. Joyce said a lot of things, such as: If Dublin was to be destroyed,Ulysses would be the book used to put it back together again. He said the same thing about the universe in accordance with Finnegans Wake.FW is a literary work that seems to have condensed time and space into a nutshell. Joyce also said of Ulysses: I'm writing a book to keep the scholars and professors guessing for centuries. That is the only way to ensure one's own immortality. Adam Michael Luebke

James Joyce is a tough read.  When a reader manages to get through with Dubliners, a collection of short-stories, the novel Portrait of the Artist as Young Man tosses up an offensive line of cultural tropes and references from Western Civilization that is as daunting as Jerry Kramer, Jim Otto, Fuzzy Thurston, Jim Ringo, Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski.  Those gents were the 1959-1963 Green Bay Packer offensive linemen - tough to get through.

Life is tough to get through.  James Joyce was said to have revolutionized literature - not really. Many, many, many ink-slingers are as thick with cross-references and dark conceits - Rabelais, Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift and Marcel Proust to name a few. Joyce, however,  could be as lucid and straightforward as a sportswriter when he chose to do so, or if the occasion demanded.

The more one brings to the blank paper, along with the standards of plain and truthful speaking, the richer the benefits for the writer's readers.    James Joyce brought music to his reader via the written word. Sound and Sense merged in a beautifully orchestrated and executed performance - Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake make the 1959-1963 Packers' offensive line seem like Mae Kennedy Kane Dancers *confronting Ragen's Colts with hangovers. Those are two obscure Chicago references for the energetic reader.

Ulysses offers this - Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine (55).

Is there anything left un-uttered? Ulysses is that Roman name for that Greek guy what wandered when he pissed off the gods and took a long time to get home to the Old Lady and the kid, right?  So, what's that got to do with Dublin on  16 June 1904?  Plenty.  That's the point.

Michael Moriarty writes much like James Joyce and brings a vast arsenal of culture to his prose.  This early morning before I could get to Kareem's Dunkin Donuts at 104th & Western, I was fully  caffeinated with the following offering by my pal Michael Moriarty.   Mr. Moriarty and I share a Jesuit education, a Catholic upbringing and Chicago roots.  We learned that First Principles based upon obligation to God as the foundation to living a good and happy life.  Without a sounding board, man is deaf.  If we refuse to hear the sound of the unborn child in mother's womb, what is the point of going to a symphony.

Michael Moriarty - read and listen:

THE NEW WORLD ORDER’S FIELD OF DREAMS
By Michael MoriartyAugust 7, 2012NewsWithViews.comMy grandfather, George Moriarty, first played for Chicago.No, he didn’t field for the Chicago White Sox, a team that eventually became known as the infamous Chicago Black Sox.He played for the Chicago Cubs. That baseball team hired my grandfather right off the sandlots of The Toddlin’ Town’s very, very tough and very, very Irish South Side.“Big George”, as we used to call him, then went on to play with the New York Highlanders – which later became the New York Yankees – and then he settled down for most of his playing career with the Detroit Tigers.There he became that team’s best third baseman … until George Kell, that is.My GrandfatherMy grandfather really couldn’t hit all that well. Never broke a seasonal .300.But what a base stealer!!Stole home more times in one season than anyone in baseball history … including Ty Cobb.Well, at least that’s what my father said he did.DON’T DIE ON THIRD!was written about him.The film, Gangs of New York, wasn’t all that different from gangs of Chicago.Tough.You had to know how to fight or you weren’t going to last long.You certainly couldn’t survive in the American Big League Anything if you batted under .300.Unless you knew how to protect the better hitters.I played a hockey “Goon” in television’s Deadliest Season. I was there on the ice to do nothing more than “intimidate.”Things get a little out of hand and my character kills another player on the ice.Bang The Drum Slowly was almost exactly the opposite message from my grandfather’s life and the lessons of The Deadliest Season: Protect the wounded and the infirm and you’ll build team spirit.Another baseball film, Field of Dreams, preaches a much more profoundly Liberal sermon than Bang The Drum Slowly.Field of Dreams is not only more palatably radical than any other American baseball film but more heart-warmingly revolutionary than any other American film in recent history.It basically echoes a breathtaking philosophic position that the writer Gary Wills offered us regarding the New Testament’s Judas:Gary Wills, another version of a Christian contradiction-in-terms, a Catholic Progressive – along with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi – has been trying to canonize Judas for quite some time, exalt him as the most Christ-like of characters, this side of Christ Himself.Judas performed the job he had to perform and, therefore, he was doing God’s Will.“He was only doing his job!”Judas deserves to be honored for that.“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!”Okay.Kind of.Field of Dreams is a beautifully made film of forgiveness and reconciliation … for everyone.It is ultimately everyone’s field of dreams in everyone’s most childlike reveries.According to this film, we all, good-bad-or-indiffently-evil, end up in heaven, even every member of the undeniably but poignantly corrupt Chicago Black Sox.Okay.Kind of.There is still, however, the last, big time I noticed a dividing line between the good and the evil.Between, say Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.Then why did President Barack Hussein Obama send a gift from the Queen of England – a bust of Winston Churchill – why did he send that bust back to London?!And why did he promise Vladimir Putin of neo-Soviet Russia that he would be more “flexible” when he’s re-elected?Barack Obama must be a fan of something other than the World War II Free World.He’s not only a fan and booster but a major creator of what we now know of as “The Progressive New World Order.”Imagine a film wherein the victims of Stalinist oppression, relatives of the executed and worked to death, played soccer with Nikita Khrushchev?“All is forgiven!”Of course, a few cheating baseball players in Field of Dreams are hardly the Red Army.Dreams are the heart of an inevitably worldwide conflict; and since conflict is the heart of drama, let’s examine The Fields of Everyone’s Dreams.President Barack Hussein Obama dreams of a “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”.It’s all there in great detail within his tribute to his family, Dreams For My Father.Okay.He, however, is not the only one working on this.Guess what?The Progressive “New World Order” was most noticeably announced by George Bush Sr.A kinder gentler America” was,I believe,how Bush expressedhis own “field of dreams.”Eventually this New World Order just had to necessitate “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”What better way to begin it than by having George Bush Jr. put America into its biggest debt until, of course, Barack Hussein Obama showed up and tripled that same, record-breaking bankruptcy.Why?A Field of Dreams called the New World Order cannot be achieved without a “fundamental transformation of the United States.”What easier and simpler way to do that than by putting America into a debt that she cannot possibly extricate herself from?A field of dreams called The New World Order will take “strong medicine” in order to transform life on earth into the very heaven we experience in the filmField of Dreams.American debt is that “strong medicine”.Aside from suicidal, American debt, what is the main ingredient for creating The New World Order?Forgiveness.Apparently our feelings about the Soviet Union and Red China are the main obstacles to The New World Order’s Field of Dreams.We are in for the Obama Nation’s prolonged “teachable moment.”If we wholeheartedly forgive the Chicago Black Sox, put ourselves in heaven with them, then we can move on to forgiving the tyranny of Communism.After the revelations of America’s self-loathing, plus the opening punches to American self-respect in the patronizing brilliance of what I call “naïve genius,” the New World Order will keep America soft, warm and gooey withField of Dreams and Dreams For My Father until America welcomes her own death as a favor.I’m in Canada watching all this while rooting for the Tea Party and leadership such as Allen West. All of which are an embarrassingly painful minority.There is, however, the possibility of miracles.If such miracles don’t happen and the Obama Nation is reinstated by reelection, all of Canada had better start praying for her own miracles. My new homeland is much easier “pickings” than the former greatest nation of the Free World, the United States of America.Such death of individual freedom and responsibility is called “Progress”.With the virulently expanding death by legalized abortion and euthanasia, I call it The New World Order’s Fourth Reich.
What does that mean?The Progressively Digestible Survival of The Progressively Fittest.Until then, with the expanding control of Big Government over everything, we’ll be fed the palatable pap, the heart-warming, end-of-the-film suicide of James Earl Jones.
Perhaps never to return alive?His winningly and gently humorous dance into that heavenly field of corn?But only as a ghost of his former self?Death as merely an easily addictive field of dreams?The Western World’s Judeo-Christian culture, largely inspired by the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations?All to be melted away by a Progressively Marxist New World Order?Forgiveness for everyone?Including Judas, Mao and Joseph Stalin?When will that happen?When Hell freezes over and Heaven is a skating rink.© 2012 - Michael Moriarty - All Rights Reserved

* Mae Kennedy Kane 

Ragen's Colts - "Hit Me and You Hit 2,000". 



http://voices.yahoo.com/5-greatest-lines-james-joyces-ulysses-8361231.html?cat=9

http://newswithviews.com/Moriarty/michael133.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragen's_Colts
http://www.irishamericannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2511:chicagos-first-family-of-irish-radio&catid=86:region
http://www.dom.edu/library/collections/kane-irish-books

Actor Michael Moriarty on Literature, Existentialism and The Fragile Minds of American Youth

The mind of a young person is God's marvel. The more the young mind encounters the more it absorbs; however, what that supple organ makes use of what it takes in can be dangerous. Parents, priests and pedagogues are best agents to direct the and chennel the course of experiences and epiphanies taken in by young people. There are very bad ideas - drinking mercury, diving off of a water tower, or basing one's actions upon seductive principles founded on misery.

The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard built a theology on dread as the basis for making decisions. Abraham agonizing over his pact to sacrifice Issac as the blood bond of God's covenant was the spark of existentialism - a negative philosophy that morphed Kierkegaard's sermons into a Romantic precis of Satan's wildly idiotic battle with God. Knowing full well God's omnipotence, Old Scratch never-the-less gave it the old Ivy League try - again, and again. Byron's Childe Harold in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, lines 1031-1102 whines:

I have not loved the World, nor the World me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coined my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such-I stood
Among them, but not of them- in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

What teenage girl girl could not go weak in the knees ( Vampire, Matrix-caparisoned dark eyed, pale and pasty dreamy non Jock) over the sentiments of this brooding youth? J,D. Salinger's Holden Caufield - the quintessential American Teenage Male - narrates his negative world view and spits ironic scorn at the phonies of the ordered world. Young minds are attracted to the dark - death - dread and the Gothic.

The greatest generation and their Korean and Vietnam heirs had their bellies full of death and dread and created a lifestyle and standard of living that was the antithesis - a life affirming ethic and commitment to service - for their children. The American brooding generations had the luxury to hurl defiance at order and life itself with parsing nods to dim authorities found in books and spouting semiotic nonsense from the plush podiums of the Academy - whatever the hell that is.

Chicago-rooted actor, composer,essayist and anti-abortion activist Michael Moriarty wrote a sound study of the dangers of toxic doctrines ingested by young minds without the rigorous oversight of parents, priests and capable pedagogues - that's teachers. Mass murderer Jared Lochner seems to be a case study of toxic thought unchecked . . .and most likely unsupervised.

American Existentialism: Jared Loughner

By Michael Moriarty
web posted February 7, 2011

While Jared Loughner's list of favorite writings run from Hitler's Mein Kampf and Marx's Communist Manifesto to George Orwell, Hermann Hesse and Ernest Hemingway, a mysteriously missing set of fashionably well-respected names are the French Existentialists, such as Abert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre.

By the time I had finished that relentlessly compelling tale of gratuitous murder and vague redemption (Albert Camus' The Stranger which ends with the words, "all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration,") my sense of the world had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

The essentials of this quote are from Stranger In A Strange Land – The Enduring American Appeal Of Existentialism, Nick Gillespie's still startling review of George Cotkin's Existential America.

With the endearing confession I can share with Mr. Gillespie about existentialism – "I still never quite understood it" – I suddenly began to comprehend a few things I had not even dreamt of during Freshman year at Dartmouth and the existential labyrinths of Philosophy 101. The course was taught devoid of the endless examples of senseless murder available even then. Somehow the anti-hero of Albert Camus' The Stranger was held to be examined in an a-historical vacuum. The ghosts of Jack The Ripper and Lizzie Borden were just begging to attend class; but the Professor would not even utter their names.

After this past week, however, and the nightmares rolling out of Tucson, Arizona, with the massacre there, the insane slaughter handed out to all of America by one Jared Loughner?

Cotkin's most original insight is something that escaped Camus and the others: "Existentialism, American style ... jibes well with American antinomianism, that willingness of the lonely individual to rebel against entrenched authority in the name of his or her most intense beliefs. Antinomianism, like existentialism, challenges easy certitude, entrenched religion, and moribund political assumptions."

Scary?

Quite possibly.

This is Jared Loughner, as attorney pro-se, defending himself in court.

The crime in Albert Camus' The Stranger is merely a small example of the massacre in Tucson which America may never recover from. Yet the obscenely joyous anticipation within the murderer that "a huge crowd of spectators … should greet me with howls of execration"?

This, for an existentialist apparently, is not insanity.

This is classic anti-heroism.

"L'enfer est les autres!"

"Hell is other people", as a profoundly existential character proclaims in Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit. The brilliant critic, Walter Kaufmann, encapsulated existentialism as defined by the 4 D's: "death, despair, dread and dauntlessness". According to the likes of Jean Paul Sartre, Jared Loughner is the quintessentially existential anti-hero.

To a French existentialist, Jared Loughner is not insane.

He is "dauntlessly" addressing "death, despair and dread" with a defining existential act, multiple versions of that apparently liberating but cold-blooded killing in Albert Camus' The Stranger.

Is existentialism a true philosophy?

Or is it merely a rationalization for the "enlightened despots" of France, from 18th century Robespierre to the 20th century's Jean Paul Sartre, to either commit mass murder or openly relish the shameless homicides of Jared Loughner, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, et al?

I believe Existentialism is the 20th century effort of French intellectuals to rationalize their horridly bloody, 18th century revolution. Existentialism was, and still is for many Frenchmen and women, the effort of intellectual supremacistsin Paristo defend what is the heart of the French Revolution and the rationale for the French Guillotine: it was the Existentially justifiable thing to do at the time.

Death, despair, dread and dauntlessness!

This is the moment in which I must remind my readers of the true enemy of the French Revolution. The ultimate and permanent enemy of the French Revolution was not the aristocracy nor even the bourgeoisie.

It was and still is the Catholic Church.

In addition and more to the point of this article, the number one enemy of the Progressive Revolution or the Obama Nation's "Fundamental transformation of the United States" is not the Tea Party but the Catholic Church. Rome's unflinching and unwavering condemnation of abortion strikes at the very cornerstone of Progressive philosophy, strategy and visions of the future. While the very black attire of Catholic priests similarly signify the very existential themes of dread, death and despair, the antidote, however, is not a mindless or homicidal dauntlessness.

It is Life!

Life, life and more life!

Life that is even more dauntless, forceful and abandoned than the mad eyes of Jared Loughner.

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.

The American classroom could use Michael Moriarty.

"Sarah Palin Is America," Michael Moriarty Calls It Correctly

Any people who agree that the killing of a child is choice, will also agree that two gentleman can procreate, that America can only win by losing, that up is down and round is square have been educated pretty badly.

When Washington sent Cornwallis and his redcoats out of the trenches at Yorktown, the Crown forces bandsmen played a song -"The World Turned Upside Down." The Monarchy was sent packing. The colonists fought to become Americans. The Americans fought the British again, as well as Napoleon's Navy and the Barbary Pirates to maintain a flawed but free democratic republic that eventually ironed out the slavery issues with the blood of Americans.

After two World Wars, a catastrophic economic and climate disaster in the 1930's, the America meant to be was built in the 1950's - a revolution in life style. That lifestyle brought ease and comfort to the Nation. Wars were no longer declared, but remained horrific. Korean and Vietnam war veterans returned to comments from neighbors and even family members, "Where have you been?" Bleeding.

"No matter, we have a new two-car garage, color TV, and free college tuition. Only dummies go in the Service."

Perhaps that ease gave us too much time to worry about ourselves. I know that I am about self-absorbed as one can get - well, maybe not always.

We allowed Roe v. Wade. To me that is akin to question asked of returning servicemen -"Where have you been? Out of sight; out of mind." Out of mind can mean madness.

Actor, musician, journalist and defender of the innocent unborn Michael Moriarty wrote a powerful endorsement of Sarah Palin in Big Hollywood. I agree with Mr. Moriarty.

Lincoln predicted that America would not be destroyed by a foreign power. If she dies, it will be by suicide.
Sarah is the only life raft America has right now. Any other candidate for the Republican Party, Romney in particular, will eventually be in the back room cutting deals with a virulently Progressive Democratic Party, a radically Leftist’s poison that has, with Obama, proven its own promise: “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”
After four years of Obama, the Dr. Jeckyll of America has already become Mr. Hyde. This radical experiment with a known Marxist in the Presidency?
Suicide.
Ms. Palin has said she will announce in the near future.
Should she even announce her withdrawal, I trust these words and those of others might help her to reconsider.
Sarah Palin is America.
America at her most beautiful, her most honest, her most simply eloquent and her most resilient.
Resilience is what America needs now.
Without Sarah Palin as President, America cannot bounce back.
Many might call a President Palin “bold medicine”.
With America on the edge of suicide, Sarah Palin is the “shock treatment” needed by the entirely moribund, self-defeated and suicidally depressed world.
The human race must either be pro-life or pro-death. Those “enlightened despots” who think otherwise and are certain we can “split hairs” into whole crops of Progressive New World Order Thinking?

Sarah Palin reminds me of the women that I admire. She is a happy person. She is happy because she is honest and unafraid. I always thought that Barack Obama was a pretty good politician, until he ran for President. He was elected to be sure. You can't take that from the man. Why he was elected will be the subject of history.


Well stated, Mr. Moriarty. I do not believe that Michael Moriarty is too much concerned about criticism. We still have the vote.

Michael Moriarty, Sergei Rachmaninoff and James Joyce

“She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the dusty odor of cretonne. She was tired.” James Joyce -'Eveline' from The Dubliners

Eveline or Evvy, refused to escape and buried her White face in the common-place -lace curtains, dust and a timorous obligation to the familiar.

In this very short story by James Joyce, the reader gets dragged into the soul-less commonplace that is Eveline.

She is a middle class woman in love with a a manly, kind, adventurous and alive man named Frank. Frank is leaving dear old dirty Dublin for Buenas Aires and wants to take Evvy with him. She refuses. She stays musty and dusty. Get these final lines -

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

"Come!"

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.

"Come!"

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

"Eveline! Evvy!"

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Old Jim could work a pen.

Another fine writer is my frequent e-mail pal, Michael Moriarty. This actor, musician, journalist and courageous defender of the unborn lives in Canada and is working on an autobiographical musical composition. This musical biography may be a Confessio like St. Augustine's or an Apologia ala John Cardinal Newman. We shall see, or hear.

Nevertheless, Mr. Moriarty wrote a touching remembrance for Exit Stage Right. Like his musical composition the essays are titled The Haunted Heaven. In the passage that I provide today, Mr. Moriarty explores the coming of the Holy Spirit through the music of Rachmaninoff. Here is the passage by the Russian composer refered to in Mr. Moriarty's essay -

Rachmaninoff!

What a Virgil, Sergei Rachmaninoff, to lead me into the Haunted Heavens of Life!

Then to be reintroduced to the Russian giant by a divinely gifted genius named Olga Kern!!

She is now ripping into the last movement with all the simultaneous speed, strength and sensitivity she can summon up with the same oceanic brilliance she has mustered throughout this virtual monster of a piano concerto.

Russian composers and Russian musicians will play a monumentally large role in my life as the years pass. The first of course was the vibrantly impassioned Russian genie, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

He and his Haunted Heaven entered my life before I could even talk.

To this day Rachmaninoff's protean lyricism seems unsurpassed by anyone.

He and his music became a virtual umbilical cord to my infancy's ecstasy.

His melodies are only the beginning of his abandon to whatever muse God chose to both plague and adore him with.

Oceanic is the only adjective that seems sufficient.

Unlike Eveline in Joyce's tale, Moriarty plunges into the waves.

Michael can work a pen.


http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/959/

Michael Moriarty Fights PC Jazz Goofs & Erroll Garner - I'll Remember April

Progressive Jazz: How the Left’s ‘Teachable Moments’ Killed Bradley’s Michael Moriarty's poignant and on-target essay on the Progressive PC poisoning of jazz focused my attention on the Great Erroll Garner Click my post title for pure genius.

Errol Garner is ignored. It seems to me that Mr. Garner is ignored because he was not angry enough - to the contrary.

Garner remains unique. Playing consistently to a very high standard, he developed certain characteristics that bear few resemblances to other pianists. Notably, these include a plangent left-hand, block-chorded pulse, a dancing pattern of seemingly random ideas played with the right hand in chords or single notes, and playful introductions, which appear as independent miniature compositions, only to sweep suddenly, with apparent spontaneity and complete logic, into an entirely different song.

Sumptuously romantic on ballads, and fleet and daring on up-tempo swingers, Garner’s range was wide. Nicknamed ‘The Elf’, more, perhaps, for his diminutive stature than for the impish good humour of those introductions, Garner was the first jazz pianist since Fats Waller to appeal to the non-jazz audience, and the first jazzman ever to achieve popular acclaim from this audience without recourse to singing or clowning. Dudley Moore acknowledges much of his style to Garner, and ‘swinging 60s piano jazz’ owes a massive debt to him. Stylistically, Garner is in a category of which he is, so far, the only true member. Since his death in January 1977, there has been no sign that any other pianist other than Keith Jarrett is following his independent path in jazz.

Michael Moriarty, a jazz pianist as well as a great American actor, wrote this

My God, the politicizing of jazz had grown to a militant exclusivity that infuriated me!
Had I not been with my director and had downed a few more drinks, I might have tipped over a few tables.
Now the atmosphere of this Nicole Henry album was inspired in one of the most jazz-addicted nations in the world, Japan.
They obviously retain a freedom within their increasingly sensitized souls more American than that most American giant of world cities, New York!!
Perhaps it was the moment the sportscaster, Dick Schapp asked me, “Michael, is there anyone in New York you haven’t offended?!”
“Yes,” I should have said, “You, Dick!”
Tighten the phones to your ears, if you’re using them to listen to the intimacy Ms. Henry maintains with herself – and that, mind you, is the first necessity of any recording … or film artist for that matter – and then let the “still, small voice” in.
Let the deep and quietly, blissfully disturbing surrender happen.
Bradley’s is no more and hasn’t lived for many years because once Bradley himself had died, his poor wife could not keep the Progressive Militants out.
That crowd of elitists, enlightened despots and intellectual supremacists had driven the regular customers like myself … had forced them out.
Eventually even they didn’t come.
Why?
They had no one to give a “teachable moment” to.
What happened to Bradley’s has now happened to all of America.
How long we will be in for this horrifyingly arrogant, “teachable endlessness” … and how long this soul-less and tragically American fascism can continue … will perhaps depend upon the depth of agony we all must feel repeatedly when the quintessentially American forms of music are fed to us as a privilege only afforded us by the Progressive dictators who claim to own it.

Big Hollywood 4/10/210

Jazz belongs to all of us. Thanks Mr. Moriarty and thank you Mr. Garner

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmoriarty/2010/04/09/progressive-jazz-how-the-lefts-teachable-moments

http://www.oldies.com/artist-biography/Erroll-Garner.html

Michael Moriarty in Full - Read This Brilliant Analysis of Music, Faith and the Progressive Culture of Death

Michael Moriarty has a written an important essay. Read this.

The Haunted Heaven: Chapter Twenty Seven: Old Notes In A New WayBy Michael Moriarty
web posted December 1, 2011

Leonard Bernstein again seems to have entered my memoir as a musical guide for this most revolutionizing corner of my life. His lectures on modern music, now blocked by Koch Entertainment, this one in particular, defines "composers that have something to say". In America you increasingly pay for any education that might be offered on the internet.

With his customary brilliance, Bernstein reveals how a final diatonic, major chord, orchestrated as Stravinsky does in his Symphony of Psalms, can even sound "new".

Next, I'm watching Bernstein put Bachian muscle and balance into the execution of a Bach orchestral work.

Now, the St. Matthew Passion, as Bernstein himself says, "writing music was religion for J. S. Bach'.

"His godliness shines through all his music, first to last."

Bernstein's own divine genius as a teacher, as a composer, as a conductor?

It is beyond indisputable.

Alright.

Follow my reasoning, my deduction. If one looks at the political forces and "themes" that run and increasingly clash? Cacophony? Or modern music?

Bernstein might say, "Both!"

In that monosyllabic declaration lies Bernstein's infuriating equivocations politically. What might he be thinking now, were he alive? Would he, for one, be defending Roe v Wade?

Of course, as the only "civilized thing to do!"

Hmmm … and since Protestants, Progressive Protestants such as the Clintons and the Obamas actually promote abortion, Bach, being a Protestant child of Luther's Reformation, might agree, mightn't he?

There has always been a war between artistic genius and sanity. The confines of sanity, however, begin with "thou shalt not murder". Wander "out of that box" and you either have lunacy or just pure evil.

Crime and sin for the sake of crime and sin … until, of course, the thrill of crime and sin for the sake of crime and sin is gone.\ Then crime and sin would continue for no other joy than the pure abandon of evil. That is not lunacy, that is Evil. Evil's pure and conscious intent is the utter destruction of Good. That, of course, would mean the end of God.

Progressive "Reason" would inevitably necessitate the end of religion.

The end of God.

Eventually.

Not that the Progressives like the Clintons wouldn't lie to the faithful. They would lie and already have lied, as they say, "Big Time!" The Devil's Lobby, I call it.

C. S. Lewis, an Anglican of all things, wrote a great deal about The Devil in The Screwtape Letters and was later re-immortalized in the 1993 film, Shadowlands.

Catholic writers, of which I consider James Joyce, of course, one of, if not the greatest – the greatest, that is, if you don't consider Shakespeare a Catholic (many do) – have a profoundly more complex and subtler relationship with The Devil. The Church has truly split hairs about the depth of Hell involved with each transgression.

Forgiveness, of course, for any of the sinners is always possible, depending, of course, upon the sincerity of the sinner.

How did I get here in a chapter entitled "Old Notes In A New Way"?

There are few existing and major "old notes" that are older than the Catholic Church. The preceding Greek and Latin cultures, of course, haunt us in the same way they haunt the Catholic Church. The Catholic church, however, will be known eventually as the creation that saved the human race by her unswerving stand against abortion.

What is haunting me now is why a video accompanying a January, 2011 article, The Ox-Bow Generation, didn't work for quite some time. Yet it works now, months later. The Hanging of an innocent man is, indeed, an abortion.

The Fierce Faction For Abortion, and that is the only name I could label it with at this point, has massive influence obviously.

At the same time, this is the second day of the Arizona shooting in Tucson and Sarah Palin is still being targeted, ostensibly for her "target" symbolism.

No. It is for her stand against abortion. No one more fully represents pro-life than Sarah Palin.

Now, with Palin out of the 2012 Presidential race, it is Herman Cain who has been "forced out", not, as the press say, because of his marital past, but because of his unmitigated stand against abortion. Such a position is an assault against all "modern women"!

This is an example of The Bipartisan Progressives using gossip and marital secrets as propaganda in an "old way".

"Using old propaganda tools in an old way."

Michelle Malkin's article The progressive "climate of hate:" An illustrated primer, 2000-2010 lists, with her column's telescopic memory, the ten years of hate engendered by the fallaciously "hate-hating" Left.

The Left is well-known for serving up its vengeance cold.

Proud of it.

Glenn Beck, while on television, was doing his best to warn the Right against violence of any kind but righteous indignation can be tranquilized just so long. Perhaps that is why he avoided the issue of abortion as best he could. He was rather pushed into one episode dealing with the horrors of infanticide. Though Beck eventually proved too inflammatory and expensive for Fox Network, even he knew the hot potato that abortion has always proven to be. I don't follow his radio show so I have no idea how concerned he's been about Roe v Wade's spiritual destruction of the American soul.

However, 37 years of legalized murder could very well amount to 89 years of legalized slavery. We know how America and Americans could endure such inhumanity for just so long and then …

Ending legalized slavery is an "old note" for America.

Ending legalized abortion, with the hindsight we have about slavery, can be handled legislatively and at a much slower pace than the five years of Civil War.

Something, however, must be done now!

Why?

The American soul and her "inalienable right to life" have been destroyed by Roe v Wade.

As I have said one thousand times, the Golden Rule does not read, "Do unto gestating infants what you would not have wanted done unto your own gestating infancy."

Devoid of the Golden Rule, the American people's silence before the murder of Roe v Wade seems to be begging for an even colder indifference to human life out of the present, Far Left American government.

How does one resist a one hundred year-old Progressive Movement with profoundly international support and resources?

The Catholic Church.

An old note to be played in a new way.

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.

Catholics v. Communists - Abortion is the Da Vinci Key: Brilliant Essay By Michael Moriarty

I guarantee you, if the Catholic Church condones abortion, we won’t hear any complaints about priests and child abuse in the mainstream press, not while the Obama’s public schools are handing out condoms to five year olds without parental consent. Michael Moriarty - Big Hollywood

Opposition to Abortion is the key to the riddle of Hegalian Progressive -Communist/Progressive World War on the Catholics. Emmy and Tony Award-winning Actor, musician and journalist Michael Moriarty presents a brilliant essay. Click my post title for the full text.

It is basically the Catholic Church versus the World.

Not even America is an ally of either Israel or the Catholic Church.

America is no longer, as the President has repeatedly declared by word and deed, a Judeo-Christian Civilization.

It is clearly and merely a part of the Progressive New World Order.

As I’ve said before, America gave up any substantive resistance to the very Marxist New World Order when her Supreme Court passed the Roe v Wade decision 37 years ago.

In Europe, however, the Catholic Church has refused to condone abortion or euthanasia.

America’s collapse to the first stage of Communism, which is Socialism, was insured when the Nixon/Kissinger Presidency not only collapsed before Vietnamese Communists in Paris but when its Supreme Court – bipartisan, mind you – instituted legalized abortion.

America not only gave up the territorial fight, it surrendered in the spiritual war as well.

Michael Moriarty's " Big Town Boy" - Big Time Jazz

My expatriate pal, a son of Canaryville himself, Michael Moriarty is one talented gent.  A captain of the stage and screen, Mr. Moriarty sails the keyboards and brings in boadloads of musical compositions that recall the best in jazz -America's greatest art form.

Not only that the the tall athletic Mick has a more than decent set of pipes.

Vietnam Statistics from the Wall - Michael Moriarty Forwarded This On The Other Greatest Generation

A Vietnam Marine, Bill Pfeifer sent this to Michael Moriarty and Michael sent this along to me.

Tom Brokaw should take a look at another Greatest Generation.

Interesting Veterans Statistics off the Vietnam Memorial Wall

"Carved on these walls is the story of America , of a continuing quest to preserve both Democracy and decency, and to protect a national treasure that we call the American dream." ~President George Bush

SOMETHING to think about - Most of the surviving Parents are now Deceased.

There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall, including those added in 2010.

The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 36 years since the last casualties.

Beginning at the apex on panel 1E and going out to the end of the East wall, appearing to recede into the earth (numbered 70E - May 25, 1968), then resuming at the end of the West wall, as the wall emerges from the earth (numbered 70W - continuing May 25, 1968) and ending with a date

in 1975. Thus the war's beginning and end meet. The war is complete, coming full circle, yet broken by the earth that bounds the angle's open side and contained within the earth itself.

The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth , Mass. Listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965.

There are three sets of fathers and sons on the Wall.
39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.
8,283 were just 19 years old.
The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old
5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock was 15 years old.

997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam .
1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam .

31 sets of brothers are on the Wall.
Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons.
54 soldiers on attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia . I wonder why so many from one school.
8 Women are on the Wall. Nursing the wounded.
244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall.

Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons.
West Virginia had the highest casualty rate percapita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.

The Marines of Morenci - They led some of the scrappiest high school football and basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town of Morenci (pop. 5,058) had ever known and cheered. They enjoyed roaring beer busts. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest . And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci's mining families, the nine graduates of Morenci High enlisted as a group in the Marine Corps. Their service began on Independence Day, 1966. Only 3 returned home.

The Buddies of Midvale - LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played ball at the adjacent sandlot ball field. And they all went to Vietnam . In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 deaths.
The most casualty deaths for a single month was May 1968 - 2,415 casualties were incurred.

For most Americans who read this they will only see the numbers that the Vietnam War created. To those of us who survived the war, and to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these numbers created. We are, until we too pass away, haunted with these numbers, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. There are no noble wars, just noble warriors. (emphasis my own)

Please pass this on to those who served during this time, and those who DO Care.

Not as lean; not as mean; but still a MARINE

Charles Carroll - Catholic Founding Father & Signer of Declaration of Independence

Catholics helped make America. There were not a whole hell of a lot of Catholics in the thirteen original colonies, except for Maryland. One Catholic, Charles Carroll of Carrolton, was a patriot and stuck his Fish-on-Friday neck out as far as Sam Adams, John Adams, Ben Franklin and the lads of Virginia. In fact, Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence.

These days Catholics are under constant assault from Academics, politicians including supposed Catholics, and the hacks of secular media and Hollywood. The Catholic Church is rock solid in its defense of Life, Marriage, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Being alive precludes what secularist call Liberty or Libertine-ism and any man or woman who takes Life Vows of Love knows that the Liberty to do whatever one feels like doing is not in the cards.

Yesterday, I posted a beautifully written essay by Emmy/Tony Award winning actor and jazz musician Michael Moriarty. Mr. Moriarty said this,

All is politics these days … and all will be used to further the political game.
However, considering the Catholic Church’s major hand in overturning the Polish Communist State, the “game” is decidedly beyond politics.
The increasingly deadly Game has been a not-so-Cold War for quite some time.
Unfortunately, it is now not only Catholics versus Communists.
It is the Catholic Church versus the entire Progressive New World Order.
Versus the European Union’s Socialism.
Versus Russia’s neo-Soviet allegiance with Red China.
It is basically the Catholic Church versus the World.
Not even America is an ally of either Israel or the Catholic Church.
America is no longer, as the President has repeatedly declared by word and deed, a Judeo-Christian Civilization.
It is clearly and merely a part of the Progressive New World Order.

Catholics in America are being tested. Too many are failing that test handsomely and going along to get along - University of Notre Dame parse to weasel acceptance of abortion from our President who is abortions best friend; politicians Senators Kerry, Durbin, Dodd and Congressmen Pelosi, Stupak and Kennedy all play ball in Planned Parenthood's yard. If Catholics abandon their beliefs - life begins at conception and marriage is a sacrament between a Man and a Woman for Life -they will be praised and petted. If not, Catholics are bludgeoned as pedophile co-conspirators and worse.

That does not seem to be Original Intent of the Founding Fathers. Let's celebrate one -Charles Carroll!

"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time;
they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion,
whose morality is so sublime and pure
(and) which insures to the good eternal happiness,
are undermining the solid foundation of morals,
the best security for the duration of free governments." Maryland member of the Continental Congress, the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, US Senator for Maryland (1789-1792)

Now, that seems like Original Intent.


“To what purpose was the threat thrown out of enforcing the penal statutes [against Catholics]
by proclamation? Why am I told that my conduct is very inconsistent with the situation of one
who owes even the toleration he enjoys to the favor of government? If by instilling prejudices
into the Governor, and by every mean and wicked artifice, you can rouse the popular resentment
against certain religionists, and thus bring on a persecution of them, it will then be known
whether the toleration I enjoy be due to the favor of government or not….”

Mr. Carroll you nailed it and you never once heard MSNBC! Happy Fourth of July, America!

Born: September 19, 1737 in Annapolis, Anne Arundel County1
Father: Charles Carroll2
Mother: Elizabeth (Brooke) Carroll3
Education: attended Academy of Jesuits at Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, 1747; College of St. Omer, France, 1749-53; College of French Jesuits, Rheims, France, 1754; College of Louis-le-Grand, paris, France, 1755-57; studied law in Bourges, Paris, and London, 1757-644
Religious Affiliation: Catholic5
Marriage: June 5, 1768 to Mary (Molly) Darnall6
Children: Elizabeth, Mary, Louisa Rachel, Charles, Anne Brooke, Catherine, Elizabeth7
Private Occupations:
Planter; managed his estate "Doughoregan"
Subscriber, Potomac Company, ca. 1772
Partner, Baltimore Ironworks Company
Proprietor, Susquehanna Canal, 1783
Member, Board of Directors, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company
Landlord; money lender8
Public Service:
Conventions, Anne Arundel County, 1774-76
Maryland Senate, Western Shore, 1777-1800; Maryland Senate President 1783
Committee of Correspondence, 1774
1st Council of Safety, Western Shore, 1775
Committee of Observations, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, 1774-75
Delegate, Continental Congress, 1776, 1777-1778, 1780
Signer, Declaration of Independence, 1776
U.S. Senator, 1st, 2nd Congresses, 1789-92
Common Councilman, Annapolis, 1780-83, 1785 (resigned)9
Died: November 14, 1832 in Baltimore10
Buried: Doughoregan Manor, Anne Arundel (now Howard) County11

1774 – became a member of the Committee of Correspondence for Anne Arundel and
Annapolis (November)
1774 – elected to the 2nd Maryland Convention
1775 – served on the Maryland Committee of Correspondence and Council of Safety
(summer)
1776 – participated in a Continental Congress mission seeking Canada’s support for the
American cause (February)
1776 – chosen as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress (June)
1776 – signed the Declaration of Independence document (August)
1776 – appointed as a delegate to the convention to write Maryland’s first State Constitution
and Declaration of Rights
1776 – elected member of the first Maryland Senate
1777 – appointed delegate to Congress
1783 – elected President of the Maryland Senate
1789 – served as one of Maryland’s first two U.S. Senators

When his turn came to sign the document on that hot August day in Philadelphia in 1776, Charles Carroll stepped forward briskly, signed Charles Carroll, started back to his seat and then abruptly returned to the document and, picking up the quill pen again, added of Carrollton.

Like his fellow delegates to the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, signing his name to the document was an act of courage. Today, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the beginning of our country as an independent nation. But, if the fortunes of war had gone the other way and George Washington and his ill equipped Continental Army had lost, this document would have been a death warrant for Charles Carroll and the other fifty-five delegates who joined him in signing.

God Bless Michael Moriarty! God Bless America!

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmoriarty/2010/06/30/catholics-vs-communists/

Firefighter/ Writer Matt Drew's " Shadows of Chicago" is a Read as Tall as Its Subject

Matt Drew Firefighter and author. (DNAinfo.com)


The Devil in White City the Chicago history we usually get in WTTW specials was made sexy and marketable by posting the core narrative with a sex criminal.  The historical packaging was pretty much standard Studs Terkel approved history.   That best-selling book is being made into a film.

Chicago Fireman and writer Matthew Drew writes a Chicago saga worthy of Cinerama at the Old Michael Theatre on Dearborn. Within the acute angles of his three subjects, Charlie Comiskey, Big Jim Horan and Mayor Fred Busse,  swirl events and personalities with real Chicago spark. No agenda stuffed frauds - Shoeless Joe Jackson was a working-class hero who only stuffed his bibs  with Hundos, because the Old Roman was a cheapskate - the Studs Terkel meme.

A few years back serious Chicago scholars like former Fire Commissioner Jim Joyce and former DEA agent Rick Barrett snapped knuckles on the noggins of dozing Chicago's smart set with events, books and press opportunities focused on the valor of Chicago first respond-ers with interest in horrific Stockyard Fire of  1910 and the murder of Police Constable Jeremiah Sullivan.   Scholarship on Chicago's actual history seems to be best found in the hands of working men, like Barrett and Joyce. Pretend history is handled very nicely by  politicians political columnists and academics - Jane Addams invented the eight hour day, the Baby Ruth candy bar and the can-can.

This summer another working class scholar, Matt Drew published Shadows of Chicago: The True Story of Three Men and the Crimes That Shocked America. Matthew Drew is a Chicago firefighter who teaches firefighting tactics at University of Illinois.  The book looks at the lives of three men, a baseball player-mogul.a fireman and a mayor.

The sweep and force of the book comes from the cast of personalities who weave through the lives of these interesting men - Dever, Powers, Powderly, Swift, Capone, Rothstein, Cobb, Harrison, Armour, Dunne, and Buck Weaver.  One character that sparks a fire in my little brain-pan was fireman Albert Moriarty ( pp.131-32) the brother of professional baseball players George and William. George, Matt Drew tells his reader, played for Ty Cobb's Detroit Tigers.

George Moriarty is the grandfather of my pal the famed actor, composer, musician and writer Michael Moriarty. 

Every Chicago reader, unencumbered by historical miasma that fogs our fabricated Chicago history, will find a connection like the one that I mentioned and breath in fresh ideas.  Real history, from Herodatus to Drew, manages to do just that.

Here is fine review of Matthew Drew's fine book.
http://www.forestparkreview.com/News/Articles/9-10-2013/1910-Stockyard-fire-tale-told-in-firefighter's-new-book/

USMC v. ACLU

This was sent to me by Two-time Emmy Winner, Jazz Pianist, Journalist, Essayist and Implacable Foe of Abortion and Progressive Nonsense, Michael Moriarty.

If you look closely at the picture above, you will note that all the Marines pictured are bowing their heads. That's because they're praying. This incident took place at a recent ceremony honoring the birthday of the corps, and it has the ACLU up in arms. "These are federal employees," says Lucius Traveler, a spokesman for the ACLU, "on federal property and on federal time.. For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately."

When asked about the ACLU's charges, Colonel Jack Fessender, speaking for the Commandant of the Corps said (cleaned up a bit), "Screw the ACLU." GOD Bless Our Warriors. Send the ACLU to France !

Please send this to people you know, so everyone will know how stupid the ACLU is getting in trying to remove GOD from everything and every place in America May God Bless America , One Nation Under GOD!

click my post title for a fine essay by Michael Moriarty!

If Personal PAC Says So, Vote For Aurelia Pucinski for Illinois Supreme Court Justice

I'm not even an active Catholic but I do know that abortion is murder. That doesn't make me a Catholic. It makes me a sane human being. Michael Moriarty

We all know that Personal PAC, Planned Parenthood's Illinois Political Money Muscle, and Boss Terry Cosgrove give Governor Pat Quinn his marching orders.

Governor Quinn quakes before the power and majesty of Abortion's Bishop Terry, while he dismisses the Catholic Bishops of the faith into which he was baptized with a toss of the head and a boast of his Christianity. That is a matter of very public record.

Personal Pac is the most powerful political machine in Illinois. A federal District Judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter, Marvin Aspen, ruled that Personal PAC could use more power. Abortion is not a health initiative, it is home-plate for political power.

Personal PAC targets Aurelia Pucinski as dangerous to Abortion. Abortion provides the money and political muscle that gave Illinois the Religious Liberty and Civil Union Act and is now boiling up bucks for the Gay Marriage Law that the ever compliant Governor Quinn will sign. Abortion lends support to the power of the Teachers Unions, to SEIU and other tax-dollar-dependent grass roots shouters. Abortion helps International Solidarity Movement find aid and comfort for Hamas.

If Aurelia Pucinski is dangerous to Abortion, vote for Aurelia Pucinski to replace the vacancy of Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald.

I did.


Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies.

Kevin Myers - Why One Writes, Yet Sales Stink Out Loud

I have written two books, articles, reviews, rants, confessions, obfuscations, grants, proposals, love notes and many, many apologies. I am blessed to have received payment for the books, articles and reviews. Go figure.

Those payments went immediately to debtors - Peoples Gas, ATT, ComEd, Cook County, The City of Chicago, and the great folks at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Some spare shillings and shekels went to entertainment and my snappy habiliments.

Great writers practice the art. I too practice the craft with the love of the game of a fourth-stringer. There are so many wonderful writers. Some of my favorite writers practicing today are not the best-selling political pundits and hacks, nor the plugged-in lawyers, let alone the socialite dabblers who pen less than meaty bestsellers, and columns. In my helot's opinion the very best writers are:

Joseph Epstein - America's Montaigne: Joe Epstein is to Pat Hickey as Tartar of Kobe beef with Imperial Beluga caviar and Belons oyster is to a Slim Jim.

Beachwood Reporter Publisher/Editor and moral titan Steve Rhodes who has more integrity than Gates has nickels

Actor/journalist/musician Michael Moriarty - God did overtime pumping talent, grace and courage in this fierce defender of honesty

Literary critic/activist Camille Paglia - The Total Woman

Lawyer/journalist Christine Flowers of Philadelphia - A Superb Person

Sports writer and Leo HS President Dan McGrath the King of the Declarative Sentence

Chicago historian Richard Lindberg If it happened Richard reports on it without varnish

Chicago attorney/journalist/historian Dan Kelley who is exact and poetic in presenting his prose

Jazz critic/journalist Stanley Crouch he writes with the soul of a sailor

Bloggers John Ruberry and Anne Leahy who keep Illinois wide awake to common sense

Novelist/historian Kevin Baker - read Baker's historical novels and understand America: Paradise Alley, Dreamland and Strivers Row better than Dos Passos.

Tribune columnist John Kass - Royko couldn't carry John's jockstrap, nor would care to

Sun Times Reporters Natasha Korecki and Mark Konkol Hope for Journalism

Second City Cop - The Flat-foot can sling prose

Humorist/actor/Film Maker Mike Houlihan: The Man is Pure Gold

18th Century Chicago Genius the late Tom Roeser

Journalist Dennis Byrne a reminder of Ray Coffey's honest prose

Demographer/journalist Joel Kotkin

Political Pundit Don Rose - Maybe the only Progressive who parts with a nickel

Crime Biographer/historian Rose Keefe - tougher than Smash McKenna after a full meal

Priest/Homilist -Father Tony Mazurkiewicz,O.Carm. & Father Gallagher of Sacred Heart Church

At the top of this talented tree, is Irish Independent columnist Kevin Myers. The man can line up words like Napoleon lined up Tirailleurs, Grenadiers, and Chasseurs at Austerlitz. Today, Kevin Myers presents a golden insight to writers in the face of reality.

Spilling ink does not portend a bankable pot of gold.

Wednesday June 08 2011
Few things so thoroughly test the will to live of Writers of Unsuccessful Books (such as this columnist) as the inexcusable success of others, and why they are so favoured.

Any tour of a bookshop by us WUBs reveals slain pine trees groaning beneath the weight of the pink-covered works by authors who may simply be described: TOP: Twenties, Ovaried, Photogenic. And if they're not T or P, but are still O, then there's always the Orange prize for women writers only (which is announced today: imagine the outcry from those well-known literary feminists Fallopia Whynge and Ovaria Fume over a man-only literary award).

The 'Daily Telegraph' last week gave a half-page splash to the first novel of a TOP named Georgina Bloomberg. The author is 28 and already famous, being the very successful show-jumping daughter of the even more famous Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street billionaire and mayor of New York. Moreover, no doubt emboldened by family success, her sister nurtures serious political ambitions. Georgina Bloomberg's debut work of fiction is about -- well whaddya know -- a successful show-jumping daughter of a Wall Street billionaire, with a politically ambitious older sister. The fair Miss Bloomberg has even been interviewed at length about her "writing" by the 'New York Times', dear God almighty. So how was this possible? All was revealed in the 'Telegraph' story: "Bloomsbury, the publisher, said the idea for the book came from an agent."

Of course it bloody did. (Pause to vomit).

Traditional publishing is dying, and the market-driven, agent-led TOPification of books is one reason why. However, market distortions are not just at the TOP level of pulp fiction. It is now the norm for established writers to gushingly review one another's books: in Ireland, it is Colm/Sebastian/Joseph/ Anne, in Britain it is Julian/ Ian/Sebastian/Martin, interlocking literary torcs upon whose burnished gold the sun of mutually warm critiques never sets.

Which is why at this time of year, I almost welcome the annual outbursts of toxin from VS Naipaul, at whatever festival he is attending. Last week he announced at Hay that no woman writer would ever be as good as him -- to an entirely predictable fury. He is a quite refreshingly horrible man. He doesn't write to be successful or to be popular. He has no eye for a market, or an idea of what a market is. This is not a touching and beguiling naivety, so much as ignorance about the real world, which in scale is probably every bit the equal of the ignorance of the delightful Miss Bloomberg. But presumably unlike her, Naipaul exults in his ignorance as proof of his superiority, where in reality it is simply a pathological disorder.

Naipaul is a monster. His monstrousness is not made in any way more charming by his lack of guilt or shame. By his own account he repeatedly betrayed his young and vulnerable wife with prostitutes.

He is the kind of vile man who is murdered in the opening pages of a whodunit, and at the end we find that every single character we have met in the book, including the investigating police officers, plus Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Roger Ackroyd and Sherlock Holmes, have all entered the general and thoroughly deserved conspiracy to kill him.

Yet Naipaul is a sublime writer. No living novelist comes near him. It is an inexplicable paradox. The only other "modern" novelist who was so unpleasant was also perhaps the only English writer over the past century who was his match: Evelyn Waugh. He too was a monster: a posturing snob, a sneering bully and -- like Naipaul today -- an alpha male whom no one could ever best in social interaction, merely because of his status in the human hierarchy. This is a fact of life that confirms our condition as exalted chimpanzees: it is always impossible for lower status animals to defeat higher status animals in social conflict. No one left Bismarck's or Hitler's or Stalin's or Churchill's or Cheney's or Rumsfeld's offices slapping their thighs and chuckling triumphantly: "By God, I got the better of that dormouse."

WAugh's misanthropic life came to an end just as Naipaul's literary career was beginning, almost like a transmigration of abominable souls. Nonetheless, wise observers ought to judge the literary merits of both men solely for their written words, whereas their spoken utterances, full of hatred, bigotry and snobbery, should be treated with contempt.

But of course, the world is not wise, which is why Naipaul's recent and very silly boast, that no woman writer would ever be as good as him, has been making predictably loud headlines, with a drearily predictable indignation from Fallopia Whynge and Ovaria Fume. This is stupid: his opinions are neither worth repeating, rejecting nor reacting to, in any way. They should, like Miss Bloomberg's literary ambitions, and those of all her fellow TOPs, be totally ignored. Alas, that is not the way life on this planet works, which is what we poor weeping WUBs know all too well, as we watch Bloomberg make No 1 in Tesco, while Naipaul is the overall bestseller in Hodges Figgis, and Writers With Ovaries enjoy the Orange.

Irish Independent

Ain't it true though.

Canaryville Roots

  Leo President Dan McGrath and four of the seven Canaryvillains at Leo High School with Joe's Mom and Coach Fogarty: from the left (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell,)

“When I went to take the entrance exams, it was during the famous winter storms [of 1979]. We took the test that day. They had to make arrangements to get us back home. Jay Strandring drove the Canaryville guys back home. He dropped us off at one of the viaducts because he realized he wouldn’t be able to get back out if he went under the viaduct. We walked back in the neighborhood. I think that was my first time ever at the school. I must have shadowed with my brother there once or twice, I suppose. But the first day I went to Leo as a student, I had to ask the bus driver if that was the school. We stopped at 79th, and I asked if that was Leo, and he said, “You’re going to a school you don’t even know where it’s at.”
I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s it.”
“My two oldest brothers went to St. Ignatius. My brother right above me went to Leo. My mom didn’t really like St. Rita at the time because my uncle—her brother—had gone there. My brother [Michael] just didn’t like school. It didn’t matter where he went. A funny story about my first day at Leo, I’m walking past the doorway and I hear: ‘McFarlane.’ I backed up, until I was in the doorway, and it was one of the [football] coaches, Dave Mutter. He grabbed me by the shirt and said: ‘Are you anything like your brother?’ I looked at him and said, ‘Absolutely not.’ That kind of shocked him. He let me go and he said something like, ‘Good for you.’ My brother had a reputation by the time I got to Leo. During my time at Leo, my brother would stop me in the hallway and say, ‘We’re going to the beach. Do you wanna go?’ With his buddies, he would just disappear. I was always afraid to do something like that with my parents.
“I took the Halsted bus when I first started at Leo, and then we had a bus service that started to pick us up. It was close to my house, I had to walk down like five houses to the corner.”

Father William McFarlane '83

This summer it has been my pleasure and pride to pick-up and deliver incoming freshman to Leo High School -one very big lad from Bronzeville and seven gents from Canaryville -One huge black kids and seven hard-scrabble pale-faces from St. Gabe's.  I pick them up between 7-7:25 AM and they are never late and very rarely absent.  My task is merely a cog in a recruitment and marketing machine developed by Leo football coach, admissions director and Father Flanagan to hundreds of Leo Men, Mike Holmes and Leo President Dan McGrath.

Leo High School is a Catholic high school for young men situated in the Gresham neighborhood on 79th Street just west of Halsted ( 7910 S. Sangamon Street -60620).  This iconic lion of a building is home to thousands of men from Chicago's stockyard, industrial and railroad past. Leo was built at the command of George Cardinal Mundelein and under the supervision of Msgr. Peter Shewbridge, pastor of St. Leo Parish, now, closed but still serving veterans through Catholic Charities. The building designed by Joseph McCarthy, lieutenant and disciple of Daniel Burnham went up in 1921;  the school opened in 1926.

Catholics from all over the industrial south side of Chicago sent their sons to Leo High School. which competed huskily with older and more established Mount Carmel, St. Rita and De La Salle. One of the most powerful cadres of talent attended Leo from St. Gabriel Parish in Canaryville.  e.g. Basketball standout James "Bro" Farrell dominated the hardwood floors of local, state and national opponents. St. Gabe's, south of Bridgeport, is the incubator of south side Catholic Chicago.
That is because of a man and an institution - Msgr. Maurice Dorney* and the Chicago Stockyards.

The Chicago Stockyards, St. Gabe's, was home to workers - not the affluent scions of burger families from Lake or DuPage counties who Occupy Chicago with Visa and Mastercards in their wallets - workers who scratched out a living, contributed to their church, built schools and spent their free-time fighting for the eight-hour day.  These workers penned, drovered, killed, butchered, rendered and cleaned every thing on four legs for meat, teeth, bones, marrow hides, horns  to be transformed for America's tables, hairbrushes, buttons, wardrobes and footwear.  They made soap, gelatin, fertilizer and bacon for the Armour, Agar, Cudahy, Swift and Hammond families.  They lost fingers, lungs and lives in the act of building community.   Father Dorney protected their paychecks from gamblers, pimps and thugs and their dignity from Social Darwinism. There is no expressway named for Msgr. Dorney. Dorney was and remains the spirit of Canaryville, That spirit is reflected in the accomplishments past, present and to come by his spiritual children.

Muhammad Ali said that, in his opinion, the greatest boxer of all time was Canaryville boxer Packy McFarland; Chicago White Sox 1st baseman George Moriarty was Canaryville born and bred and would become a Cub and later move to a long career as Detroit Tiger, where he took root as a coach and American League umpire - his grandson ( here with Robert DeNiro)would become one of America's greatest actors and accomplished musician, composer and author Michael Moriarty. Canaryville is home to priests as well as  punchers of pigs and pedestrians.

The south side Catholic union family began in the blood, bones and hides of Canary.  Many of those families became wildly successful and moved from The 'Ville but never out of it. My maternal grandfather was a lather according to his union card, but moreso a Regans Colts shoulder-hitter and utility tough guy for the Cermak/Kelly/Kennelly and Daley Reg'lar Demacrats as well as occasional operative for Ralph Sheldon.  His brother became a priest and labor chaplain - he would give the last rites to Brady, McCarthy ( Leo '67) and Delahanty in Washington D.C. when Jodie Foster's stalker tried to kill President Reagan. Carnaryville seems to be everywhere.

Canaryville is physically and spiritually manifest at Leo High School once again. African American and white Catholic Alumni have worked with Mike Holmes and Dan McGrath for the last three years to give Leo some ethnic diversity - since 1991, Leo High School has been 100% African American. Black alumni behind Mike Holmes have pushed to recruit Hispanic and white students.  Black Alumni Mike Anderson and Mike Lee have teamed with Canaryvillains and Irish Catholic alums Brian Fogarty and Jack Farnan and impressed young white guys from St. Gabe's parish to be Leo Men. Last year Jeff "White Chocolate" X___________ added his see-through Irish pelt to the darker hued Lions.  This year, Leo welcomes seven more Canaryville gentlemen:Tommy, AJ, Brian F, Brian C, Joe C, CK, Mitch C are Leo Men!


My morning's route takes me to Bronzeville, where in the shadow of the Black Doughboy on Martin Luther King Drive at 35th Street, I wait for Daylon F - a mountain of sweetness and innocence packed into 6'3" and change. Daylon is the latest in the many Leo Men from Bronzeville, like Leo Akim Hunter (Leo 2004 & Northwestern University 2008).


 Daylon and I head west past De La Salle Institute and hang a left at Wentworth on the front porch of Comiskey Park ( it will never be The Cell) and head south with this daily admonition from my co-pilot Daylon -" Don't Turn on Root Street and get to swearin' Mr. Hickey."  Architect John Root, for whom the street is named, helped Maurice Dorney build St. Gabriel's Church, school, rectory and convent, as well as affordable housing for the working families - many of whom still call St. Gabe's home more than century later.  We maintain our course to 43rd Street and hang a right westward to Emerald Street and carefully wind around the cul-de-sac lite south to Graham Elementary School parking lot. 


We are usually greeted by this school's engineer Dean Fuller Leo '71 a resident of Canaryville. The red-heads and pale faces load the Ford Van with critiques of the Dunkin Donut selection, " No long-johns?  Don't get powdered, please it's as bad as the nut-sprinkles on them, Mr. Hickey. Just get frosted and we won't have a problem"  Likewise, I get informed about the upcoming Freshman football season, Miss Meany's math and Coach Ed Adams' reading classes.  All of the young men will play football, basketball, baseball and a few will box. They are good students and delightful companions who lack not a jot for self-esteem.  None of them have central air conditioning and universally accept heat.  They are tough kids from Bronzeville amd Canaryville. Daylon's only complaint is the obviously racist hornet who torments his daily drink of water at the public fountain west of the CPS school parking lot.  The Dunkin Donuts have a very short life-span - roughly 43rd Street to 79th Street.

*Saint Gabriel Parish & Elementary School are positioned in the heart of Canaryville, a small community of several third and fourth generation Irish immigrants. The neighborhood is extremely proud of its strong roots to Ireland with family ties running deep and strong in the parish and school. Saint Gabriel is a hidden gem, tucked away amid century old homes and secluded from the neighborhoods surrounding Canaryville.
As Saint Gabriel Parish celebrates its 130th Anniversary, we would like to share how the school and parish began. Many people know that Father Maurice Dorney was St. Gabriel’s first pastor, but did you know… • Father Dorney had the foresight to purchase 20 lots (from 45th to 46th and Lowe) for $500(!) to build the church, school, convent and rectory for Saint Gabriel’s • While pastor, Father Dorney graduated from law school • Also know as “The King of the Yards,” Father was friends to both workingman and company owner, procuring jobs and helping avert strikes • Father Dorney was gifted with a block of stock from the head of National Livestock Bank – after two decades the dividends grew to $68,000, and the money was spend “for the welfare of the church, and assisting in the school’s of Saint Gabriel” • Father Traveled to Ireland in 1887 and was instrumental in the exoneration of Charles Stewart Parnell (champion of home rule for Ireland) who was accused of complicity in a murder.

 http://www.leohighschool.org/
http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/07/moriartys-musings-my-french-symphony/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragen's_Colts
http://www.leohsalumniassoc.com/alumni%20stories/mcfarlane83/mcfarlane.html
http://www.connorcoyne.com/blog/2004/09/back-to-canaryville-blues/
http://saintgabes.com/?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=56
http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/mcfarland.html