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"Tom Schlafly’s commentary this morning was ridiculous.” So read the opening line of a message from Jon Morgan in Montreal to KWMU, a St. Louis affiliate of National Public Radio. Morgan, an alert listener (AL), was referring to my commentary in which I cited Senator Robert Byrd’s record of public bigotry from the 1940s, when he first joined the Ku Klux Klan, to the 21st century, when he used an ugly racial slur on network television. My point was that, out of 100 Senators, surely the United States Senate could find someone better to elect to the office of President Pro Tempore, which is third in the line of succession to the presidency. Mr. Morgan strongly disagreed with both my reasoning and my conclusion.
In a subsequent e-mail, he wrote, “It’s not just that I disagree with what you said. It’s that there seems to be no rational explanation for it.” In another electronic billet doux, Mr. Morgan refused to give me personally any credit for anything worthy that Schlafly Beer might have done over the years: “I can’t draw conclusions based on what Schlafly Beer did, because I don’t know your connection to the business (I have the same surname as J. P. Morgan and no connection to him or the finance industry).” While denying any link with the famous financier, this defender of Robert Byrd did not disclaim any connection with Captain Morgan Rum, though I doubt that there is one, given Byrd’s outspoken hostility to alcoholic beverages over the years.
Shortly after receiving Mr. Morgan’s missives from Montreal, I got a letter via snail mail from an alert reader (AR) at the opposite end of Canada. Professor Richard Unger, the Chairman of the History Department at the University of British Columbia and the author of a book discussed in this space a few months ago, wrote, “I read your editorial with interest.” He went on to say, “Your comments are much appreciated.” In conclusion he added, “Congratulations on prospering in the backyard of big brewer.” At least someone north of the border knows about Schlafly Beer and doesn’t think my opinions are ridiculous.
Closer to home, an AR who has frequently found fault with this column in the past was the first person to point out an error in my recently published book. The Reverend Timothy Horner, OSB, who taught me in high school more than 40 years ago, wrote to inform me that the surname of the poet A. E. Housman was misspelled in the index of A New Religion in Mecca. Father Timothy, who always tried to say something positive about his students so as not to bruise our fragile egos too much, did give me credit for spelling the name correctly in the body of the book.
Housman, like Father Timothy, studied Classics at Oxford University. (Unlike Father Timothy, he failed his final exam and never received a degree.) I cited him in my book because of what he wrote about beer in A Shropshire Lad. A line from this work that I did not quote in my book, largely out of deference to the sensibilities of Classics scholars like Father Timothy, was “Terence, this is stupid stuff.” (Terence being one of the Roman authors I studied under Father Timothy, I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I or any of my classmates had declaimed this line in class and continued, in the words of Housman, “But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly ache.” Somehow, I don’t think it would have been smart or effective for us to invoke Housman’s lines as a defense for not doing our Latin homework.)
In other high school Latin classes I read works by Cicero, who was notorious for writing single sentences almost as long as one of my columns. In addition to being wordy, Cicero also had the habit of beginning his sentences with, “Praetereo,” which literally means “pass by,” but in Cicero’s case usually meant, “I’m not going to mention.” Invariably, when Cicero said he wasn’t going to mention something, beleaguered students knew they could count on several long paragraphs devoted to the topic he said he wasn’t going to discuss.
Many high school students who were never subjected to the “stupid stuff” written by Terence or the prolix prose of Cicero were nevertheless exposed to Ciceronian rhetorical techniques in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Who can forget the scene in which Marc Antony tells his friends, Romans and countrymen that he’s not going to praise Caesar and then spends a lot of time doing precisely that? Midway through the speech, Marc Antony announces that he’s not going to read Caesar’s will. He then rambles on for a while, repeatedly telling the crowd that he won’t read the will, before finally getting around to reading it. Along the way he famously says that Brutus, whom he has consistently described as “honourable,” delivered “the most unkindest cut of all” when he stabbed Caesar. (Was I the only schoolboy or girl who delighted in telling a high school English teacher that these were the “most ungrammaticalest words I ever read,” written by a guy who was supposedly such a great author?).
While Cicero and Shakespeare’s Marc Antony are renowned for speaking at length on topics they said they wouldn’t discuss, in our era O. J. Simpson is famous for writing at length about a crime he said he didn’t commit. Not having read his book, If I Did It, I don’t know how O. J. said he would have perpetrated “the most unkindest cuts of all” against his wife and her friend. Nor do I know whether the Juice–who, unlike A. E. Housman, actually graduated from a university–would have committed such a heinous crime against grammar as Shakespeare did.
According to published reports, Simpson was paid millions of dollars for a book that was never in fact released about a crime that the author denies committing. By contrast, my book about a brewery I readily admit founding was in fact released and is likely to earn a whole lot less. Nevertheless, although my book is certain to be a lot less remunerative than O. J.’s, it was probably instrumental in my being listed among St. Louis Magazine’s “50 most powerful people.”
That’s right. I’m number 29, right behind the hip-hop magnate Nelly, who’s number 28. Both Nelly and I are credited with having brought new beverages to the market: Pimp Juice and Schlafly Beer, respectively. And I’m given additional recognition as the author of A New Religion in Mecca. The article even speculates that in 2007 I might have “a writerly career” and “a spot on Fresh Air,” a nationally syndicated program on National Public Radio. If these predictions come true, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that there will be at least one NPR listener in Montreal who will complain that whatever I say on the air is “ridiculous.”
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