Riversong: Classic Trash Novel

RIVERSONG (2011)

Tess Hardwick

Booktrope 978193596147

*  

The line between “literature” and mere “fiction” is admittedly subjective, but if you think there is none, I’d suggest a few dozen pages of Riversong. There’s no way anyone would confuse this book with literature—not with its contrived plot, torturous dialogue, paste-up characters, logic gaps, and prose so florid I suspect the first draft was written with a purple Flair.

The book opens in a backcountry Oregon town, where reclusive Lee Tucker, the daughter of a single, alcoholic, and agoraphobic mother, is about to graduate from high school and must endure last indignity: a senior party alongside a river in which she can’t swim and in proximity with the obnoxious local town rich boy who is intent on getting into her cutoffs. Lee flees his advances, goes off to college to study art, changes her major, marries, moves to Seattle, and never looks back. That is, until her husband, a video game developer, commits suicide and saddles Lee with a pregnancy and over a million dollars of debt owed to local organized crime figures. A mob heavy named Von shows up to shake her down. She sells all she owns–about half of what is owed–promises Von the rest in a week, and flees town with the aid of her best friend, a gay guy she met in college.

Got all that? Wait; it gets more absurd. Lee goes back to her hometown determined to renovate her now-deceased mother’s house, earn some money, sell the property, and pay off Von before he finds her first and kills her for lighting out to avoid the 750 grand she still owes. I’ll bet none of you could figure out that Lee will find  that everything for which she was searching was right there in that dusty old river town all along. Sort of. Her old tormentor is still there, but his old man, Mike, is a hard-edged sweetie who can’t wait to bankroll Lee’s plan to revamp the town restaurant. And, of course, what this town of a thousand souls–half of whom seem to be drug dealers and the other half women who have been dumped upon–really wants is an upscale gourmet eatery. And I bet none of you could predict that Lee would find a new love just waiting to take her pregnant body into his arms. Okay, maybe you could, but did I tell you that he’s a Hispanic musician? Or that her gay friend decides to leave Seattle for the better prospects of a redneck country town? There’s also a lesbian character, so let’s give Hardwick props for political correctness. If only she had a Morgan Freeman-like elderly black gent dispensing pearls of wisdom, she’d have all the bases covered. As it is, that role goes to Ellen, her elderly neighbor, former English teacher, and caregiver for Lee’s late mother. I won’t even hint how she’s finally linked to Lee; you wouldn’t believe me.

This is a classic trashy novel, though Hardwick does manage to make the sex scenes read as if they are food reviews, and the food descriptions titillate like soft porn. Most of the book is predictable, the rest improbable. Who knew, for instance, that the Seattle mob underwrote video game programmers? (Why didn’t Lee’s husband just get the money from Rhode Island taxpayers like respectable video game purveyors are supposed to do?) Who knew that the mob’s hired muscle would be so clueless as never to think of searching for someone in the very town from which she hailed? Or that no one could figure out that the grown lads hanging out in a public parking lot might be dealing drugs rather than trading baseball cards? Or that everyone would live happily ever after?

This book is so hackneyed that it leaves a trail of horse manure in its wake.

The NHL’s Disorderly House

The NHL Seeks a Return to its Fishing Channel Recent History 

So here we go again—the fourth NHL labor stoppage in the past twenty years. A causal observer might think that the Lords of the Boards have a death wish. These guys do more than go out of their way to relegate the game to an afterthought in the collective North American sports fan mind–their idea of making a right turn is to head south out of Toronto and keep going.

We hear much about the NHL being in good financial shape–$3.3 billion in surplus revenue is the figure commonly bandied about.  According to Forbes that’s a pretty accurate figure, but it’s also a deceptive one; some teams make money, but in 2011-2012, eighteen did not. I’m always amused by political debates in North America if, for no other reason, some of the most strident free-market guys are the ones that think socialism—e.g. “revenue sharing”—is a good model for professional sports. One of the things that’s terribly wrong with the NHL is that well-run franchises subsidize the hobbies of rich men that want someone else to pay for their broken toys. In order, the rich teams (in terms of value) are: Toronto, the New York Rangers, Montreal, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. But that doesn’t even tell the whole story; even the Pens actually lost a few bucks last year. Revenue is far more than putting fannies in the loge seats or the theoretical resale value of a club. If we parse the numbers further, we find that six Canadian teams—all of them sans Winnipeg, which must pay debt associated with leaving Atlanta—generated one-third of all hockey revenue (TV, radio, merchandise, and residuals). The Edmonton Oilers haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1990, but they sure do generate revenue! More to the point, Edmonton helps pay the tab for sand storms like the Phoenix Coyotes.

The first thing hockey has to do to get its act together is admit that the Southern strategy was a flop with a capital F. Phoenix set the NHL back by a whopping -$24.4 million last year and only Gary Bettman thinks the game is ever going to squeeze money from saguaros. Stop this farce. And while we’re at it, admit that there are Coyotes-in-the-making out there: Nashville, Tampa, Sunrise, and Raleigh. I mean no disrespect to rabid fans in those cities, but the harsh economic fact is that each of these is a second-tier city insofar as the Golden Goose–media revenue–is concerned. There’s a reason these cities are never mentioned when other major league sports speak of moving teams or expanding. Sunrise, its (sort of) proximity to Miami notwithstanding, is an overgrown town of under 85,000; Raleigh has just 416,000 people, and so on. More to the point, name a major media outlet in Nashville, Raleigh, or Sunrise. And haven’t the Rays proved that Tampa isn’t a pro sports city? Without major media penetration, there’s no more reason for these places to have a hockey team than Hartford, Connecticut. (Hey, there were a lot of rabid Whalers’ fans!)

There are several other critical franchises, Columbus topping the list. Ohio State football in Columbus? Sure! Hockey? (See media above). Only the Coyotes lost more money than the Blue Jackets, who have become the Kansas City Royals of hockey—a breeder of talent that skates away to cities that can afford it. The Islanders and Devils are also hemorrhaging money and another reality is that metro New York probably ought to have two hockey teams, not three. Also losing lots of cash are the Ducks, the Sharks, and the Capitals. See a pattern here?

I doubt this will happen, but the first step would be to trim the size of the league. Personally I’d like to see a 24-team league, but that won’t fly with owners or the union. So let’s try 28 by folding the Coyotes and Blue Jackets and holding a player dispersal draft. The next step is to move failing franchises. My new NHL would have four divisions of seven teams each. Division winners get a playoff bye and the next eight teams by point totals play for the right to move on. It would look like this:

Northeast: Boston, Brooklyn (the former New Jersey Devils), Montreal, New York (Rangers), Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Quebec City (the former Islanders).

Central: Chicago, Detroit, Chicago, Toronto (Maple Leafs), Toronto Lightning (from Tampa), Ottawa, St. Louis, and Buffalo. (Toronto is the Holy Land of Hockey. It could probably support four teams.) St. Louis and Buffalo are endangered franchises and should be put on notice that Hamilton and Milwaukee are relocation-ready.

Moutain/Plains: Calgary, Dallas, Denver, Edmonton, Houston (from Carolina), Minnesota, Winnipeg. I don’t know if hockey would go down any better in Houston than in Phoenix, but the AHL teams do well and Houston is a massive media market.

Pacific: Vancouver, Los Angeles, and a whole lot of reshuffling. San Jose isn’t doing well financially, but in contrast to the Deep South, the NHL really does need a team in the Bay area. (San Jose also needs the Sharks to work or baseball may rethink the city as a landing spot for the Oakland A’s.) So keep San Jose and relocate Nashville to Seattle, the Ducks to Portland, and the Panthers to Salt Lake City. The seventh team is, frankly (and appropriately), a gamble—the Capitals to Las Vegas. Leaving D.C. wouldn’t be popular with U.S. politicians, but Washington just isn’t a very good winter sports town. The Caps have been a fine team, but steadily lose money. (Even the NBA’s Wizards lost over $5 million last year; the Caps racked up $7.5 million of red ink.) Las Vegas has no other major league franchise, but it does have minor league hockey and a metro population of nearly 2 million. I’d make this my desert strategy, not Phoenix.

One can (and many will) dispute my realignment ideas. I can anticipate the howls of derision from those in or near cities that stand to lose franchises. I feel your pain, but there isn’t anybody watching hockey during lockouts and future problems are inevitable unless most of the NHL generates revenue, not just a handful of franchises. It took the NHL years to recover from the last lockout; one or two more and it’s back to competing with fishing shows for TV revenue. You can blame whomever or whatever you wish for the labor strife—greedy owners, spoiled players, outmoded rinks, an idiotic commissioner, bruised egos—but it all comes down to money. The NHL needs to get its entire financial house in order. Hockey isn’t a non-profit organization, thus, having a handful of teams that subsidize hopeless dreams and hapless management simply isn’t a viable long-term business plan. 

The Master: A Colossal and Pretentious Flop

THE MASTER  (2012)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Annapurna Pictures, 137 mins. R (for gratuitous nudity and mumbling)

*

The pre-release buzz was that The Master would be a heavyweight Oscar contender; the post-release reality is that moviegoers unfortunate enough to see it will be force-fed a Thanksgiving turkey that arrived two months early. Among the tag lines one might hang on this bloviating, bloated fowl/foul are: “Dianetics is more understandable than Paul Thomas Anderson’s script,” “A film that will make you want to join a cult that doesn’t allow movies,” and “Joaquin Phoenix—the greatest mumbler since Marlon Brando in Superman.” Regarding the latter, don’t look for this film to win any Oscars unless a new category is added: Best Delivery of Unintelligible Utterances,” in which case it’s Phoenix in a walkover. 

The Master is a not-so-thinly veiled slam at Dianetics/Scientology, with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Lancaster Dodd, an affable clone of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard Sr. All Dodd film family members are stand-ins for the Hubbards, including Jesse Plemons as Val (L. Ron, Junior), the eldest son and heir apparent, who knows the old man is making up nonsense off the top of his head; and Amy Adams as Peggy(Mary Sue), Lancaster’s younger, but domineering third wife who is the real brains behind the scam. The family storyline is so close to that of the Hubbards that one presumes that the only reason names were changed was to deflect the likelihood of a Scientology lawsuit. (For those who don’t know, Scientology is a controversial set of beliefs that appear to be equal doses of science fiction and mystical views adapted from other religions. Past-lives, the immortality of the individual, and the search for one’s true/pure nature are among its least controversial beliefs. It is generally viewed as a cult. The “auditing” ritual by which new members are considered is similar to the “processing” practices seen in The Master. )

What we might have gotten was a penetrating look at the power of charisma, the way cults recruit, and the making of a scoundrel. In other words, we could have gotten Martha Marcy Mae Marlene, a film superior to The Master on every imaginable level. The Master centers on the fiery attract/repulse relationship between Dodd and Freddie Quell (Phoenix). Freddie is one half a child of nature, and one half low-life, moonshine-making, sex-obsessed, alcoholic, nitwit bum. Freddie returns from World War II, where he spent his final days on a Pacific Ocean coral reef masturbating into a sand sculpture of a woman, one complete with a vagina. (I felt like leaving after this scene. I should have followed my pure nature!) When circumstances lead him to Dodd, Freddie is (barely) smart enough to see The Cause/Scientology as his one shot at finding a niche in life, though the cost would be mastery over his thirst, id, and libido.

I suppose we’re supposed to muse over the essential contradiction between Dodd’s insistence upon the need to discover one’s true nature and his inability to accept that the behavior Freddie exhibits is his authentic nature, but by giving such analysis to the film I give the script more credit for thoughtfulness than it exhibits.  It’s hard to know much more about Freddie, as you’ll miss every third word Joaquin Phoenix slurs. Granted he’s playing a character slowly rotting his mind and body with the (literal) poisons he cooks into his home brew. Fine. If that’s what you want to show on the screen, don’t try to use revelatory dialogue to convey it. Nothing in this film makes much sense; it’s a rambling mess in which it’s never clear if we are seeing something that’s really happening, or if it’s a projection emanating from Freddie’s torn-sprocket mind. Ambiguity, or simply bad writing? Go with the second. 

To borrow a concept from Scientology, it’s possible that Anderson was a scriptwriter in another life, but he isn’t in this one. If that’s not direct enough, try this: I haven’t wasted 2 ½ hours this badly since I took the PSATs forty years ago.   Still confused? Try this–The Master is a piece of pretentious garbage. I’m no fan of Scientology, but I’ll give its followers credit—they’ve ignored this film. And so should you.—Rob Weir

Maria Semple Overwrites an Otherwise Total Delight

Don't tell us! 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (2012)

Maria Semple

Little, Brown ISBN: 978-0316204279

* * *

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is an unorthodox novel with unforgettable characters and an often-lamentable story arc. At its best it is wickedly funny, snarky, and inventive; at its worst it’s as contrived and implausible as TV sit-com scripts, which happen to be among the things on author Maria Semple’s resumé (“Mad About You,” “Arrested Development”). It’s a breezy, fun read, but one that will leave you feeling that maybe Semple equates her readership with some of the not-so-bright Seattle residents she incisively skewers.

The title character is Bernadette Fox, once the sensation of the architectural world and a former winner of a MacArthur Genius grant. Flash forward through professional disappointment, four miscarriages, and fifteen years, and Bernadette is now an agoraphobic eccentric living in Seattle with her husband, Elgin, a high flyer at Microsoft and a TED/YouTube sensation. They finally had a child, the precocious but heart-damaged Bee. She has all of her parents’ intelligence but more social skills than both of them combined. Bee is about to graduate (8^th grade) from her expensive private school and go to Choate. As her graduation present, Bee requests a family trip to Antarctica.

Choate and Antarctica are both well within the family budget. Semple clobbers Seattle’s nouveau riche. Her Puget Sound is awash in money, unbridled ambition, and bad taste. Neither Elgin nor Bernadette is sufficiently plugged into reality to be social gadflies. He is an absentee workaholic and she such a recluse that she has outsourced daily routines to Marjula Kapoor, a personal assistant living in India, to whom she sends rambling emails and pays 75 cents per hour to order goods from catalogues and make the occasional appointment that prise her from her home. And what a home it is! It’s neither a McMansion nor an architectural project, rather a former girls’ school whose physical deterioration parallels the decline of Bernadette’s psyche. Think the Adams Family mansion-meets-an old school, complete with holes in the ceiling, roots growing through the floor, waterlogged furniture, and a blackberries-gone-wild hiilside.

Bee doesn’t care, Elgin’s never home, and Bernadette hardly notices as she spends much of her time in an Airstream trailer parked in the drive. The neighbors notice, however, and they gossip incessantly about the family. (The open question is whether they’re all nuts, or simply snobs who think they’re too good for everyone else.) This affects Bee as the neighbor children go to the same snooty school as she. The worst buttinski is Audrey Griffin, who lives on the bottom side of the slope. She sees herself as a devout Christian even as she digs her vicious claws into everyone. Her hypocrisy is hysterical (and we soon learn she’s as batty as Bernadette), but school headmaster Ollie is even more delicious–the perfect lampoon of elite wannabes who mouth clichéd Business Speak and have all the depth of spilled milk on a marble countertop. Pompous asses such as he are among the things that Semple disembowels. Seattle doesn’t come off very well either; it’s a city populated in equal parts by the clueless bourgeoisie and drug-addled criminals. Bernadette hates Seattle, its residents, the weather, and the unbearable niceness of nearby Canadians. Seattle, she notes, has only two types of people: those with short gray hair and those with long gray hair.

Semple has a clever hook for telling her tale. It is assembled mostly from emails, letters, memos, and documents that we later learn are being used by Bee to write a book to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearances (both mental and physical). This book could have been another Confederacy of Dunces in its portrait of sociopaths, if only Semple had resisted the impulse to impose a TV-like resolution to everything. I won’t spoil the plot–Semple does that on her own–but let’s just say that there comes a profound shift in tone in which the book ceases to be character-driven and devolves into silly capers with as much believability as a live Elvis crooning for Hitler and his henchmen. There is also a natural place to end the book, but Semple plods on. It’s as if she gave it to a TV writers’ group that convinced her to write a happy ending. All of the bitterness dissolves, all of the brilliant satire disappears, and characters experience epiphanies. Bah! The last section of this book tastes like an artificial sweetener recipe gone wrong. You won’t take this advice, but here it is anyhow: stop reading when Bee and Elgin bond on the boat. The book’s title question should have been left unresolved.

--Rob Weir

Perfect Sense an Under-appreciated Film

Be among the tens who have seen this film! 

PERFECT SENSE (2011)

Directed by David MacKenzie

Scottish Screen, 92 mins. R (full frontal nudity and sensuality)

* * * *

Perfect Sense was a hit at Sundance and nowhere else; it bombed at the box office in both the United States and Britain, where it was released. Too bad, because it’s a very well acted and provocative film, despite several shortcomings.

There’s no getting away from the fact that Perfect Sense is ultimately a depressing film. It’s a science fiction romance set in the near future, one in which Armageddon unfolds slowly and mysteriously. Across the globe people experience sudden, violent temper tantrums and then lose their sense of smell. As in all such films, the scientific community is baffled by what it labels S.O.S. (Severe Olfactory Syndrome). Susan (the scrumptious and sexy Eva Green) is a Glasgow epidemiologist, one of many who are clueless about what causes S.O.S. Just outside of her apartment, Michael (the hunky Ewan McGregor) has a different dilemma; he’s the head chef of an upscale restaurant and he, his boss (Denis Lawson), and his food artist assistant James (Ewen Bremmer) worry about the financial future of a business in which aromas matter almost as much as how the food feels in the mouth. Michael, as it turns out, is a man of other hearty appetites; he’s a serial womanizer as well as a master chef.

One can, of course, predict that he and Susan will become an item, but this is not your conventional good-girl-tames-rogue picture. The two will be thrown together as much by a desire to retain a balance between passion and normality as by animal magnetism. As it turns out, loss of smell is just the outside leaf of the apocalyptic iceberg lettuce. It’s followed by mass outbreaks of sheer terror, followed by insatiable hunger, then loss of taste. So what does one do in a world without smell or taste? What do humans generally do in the face of tragedy? They seek routine and pattern. Thus Michael continues to consult his recipes, and James lovingly crafts each plate that leaves the kitchen, though neither cooks nor patrons can do other than feel the food and drink upon their tongues.  By this time, though, Susan and Michael have quite a lot of tongue action of their own on their private menus.

If only loss of smell and taste were the end of the bad news! But, of course, it isn’t. Waves of worldwide sadness bring deafness; momentary eruptions of bliss give way to blindness. All that is left is touch, which we presume to be the “perfect sense,” though one can’t hold out a lot of hope for a planet filled with humans who have no way of communicating, let alone farming, hunting, or foraging. I presume we’re supposed to muse upon how the world we live in overloads our other senses to the degree that we’re both figuratively and literally “out of touch” with one another, though I give director David MacKenzie credit for not moralizing, sorting out, or gift-wrapping an ending for us. I would yield to anyone who said the film is manipulative, but one can’t escape musing upon how the world would cope with catastrophic loss, or what one would cling to if all else was lost.

Green and McGregor are both terrific, and there’s real frisson and electricity between them. Okay, so you watch this film and wobble away off your stride because it’s unlikely that anyone lives for very much longer, let alone happily ever after. Still, you’ll be thinking about what you’ve seen and what it made you feel for days afterward, which is quite a bit more than can be said for 99% of the goes-down-easy pabulum we’re fed these days. My only beef is with critics that have heaped praise upon Danish writer Kim Fupz Aakeson, who blatantly expanded upon the central premise of Portuguese novelist José Saramago’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Blindness (1995). I kept waiting for some acknowledgement of inspiration, but none was forthcoming. As I warn students, changing a few details but pirating another’s major idea is plagiarism unless you give credit. So a thumb’s up for the film, but a raspberry to Aakeson.--Rob Weir

Maine a Page-Turner That Blows the Sheen Off Bourgeois Life

MAINE (2011)

By J. Courtney Sullivan

Knopf 978-030759126

* * * *

There are two types of fiction writers, those who extrapolate from real-life experience, and those who reside entirely in their imaginations. For her sake, I hope that J. Courtney Sullivan is from the second school because if her family is anything at all like the Kelleher clan at the heart of her newest novel, Maine, she will spend every royalty nickel she makes on therapy. To call the Kellehers dysfunctional is akin to calling Rush Limbaugh insensitive—correct, but light years short of ultimate truth. It gives away nothing to say that among the book’s pleasures is its devastating critique of blind faith and bourgeois ethics.

I picked up this book because I was headed to Maine for a vacation and know well the Cape Neddick/Ogunquit region where much of the book is set. It is a beautiful area, the perfect backdrop for hell masquerading as heaven. Sullivan’s sprawling novel spans four generations of a Boston Irish Catholic family. That’s a lot of time and, initially, the sheer number of characters seems daunting, but it eventually centers on four women: 83-year-old family matriarch, Alice; her eldest daughter Kathleen; Kathleen’s daughter, Maggie; and Alice’s (overly) dutiful daughter-in-law Ann Marie. Everything revolves around Alice, a self-absorbed, vain (and still striking) woman who wears her piety like a too-revealing summer dress. She is a complex character, but also so thoroughly calculating that hardly a page goes by in which you don’t wish you could personally strangle the old bat (even after her dark secret is revealed). But she has plenty of obnoxious competition--the Kellehers are a collection of substance abusers, recovering addicts, ne’er do wells, liars, egoists, social climbers, dreamers, and other malcontents.  When he lived, Alice’s husband, Daniel, kept the lid on the poison jar; now that he's gone, not even the cold Maine waters can absorb Kelleher toxicity. The central role of the Catholic Church notwithstanding, Daniel is the only thing resembling a saint in this novel.

Right after World War II, Daniel he won a bet in which the payoff was a hunk of oceanside real estate along what was then an undeveloped slice of southern Maine coastline. Now the unpretentious cottage he built and where Alice holds court is reachable only through the clamor of Route 1 and even that oasis stands cheek-by-jowl with a Yuppie McMansion thrown up by their lawyer son Patrick and his obsequious wife Ann Marie. Ann Marie grew up working-class disrespectful—think gangsters without money. The family beach house is part of her relentless drive to live in a happy bubble, as is her refusal to see that her own son is the white-collar analog to her thug/brother, her fruitless currying of Alice’s favor, and her obsessive building of fantasy dollhouses that are like the beach house but without the Kellehers. (Well, that’s a start!) We soon get the point that the only way to stay sane is to stay as far removed from Alice as possible. Middle daughter Clare manages this, but not the eldest, Kathleen, though lord knows she’s tried. She divorced her philandering husband decades earlier, but that’s a mortal sin in the eyes of Alice, partly because of her putative faith and partly because Alice is partial to any slime ball who flatters her. Kathleen got drunk, got sober, met a Baby Boomer dreamer named Arlo, and moved to California to take up yoga and organic worm farming. (Yep!) Unfortunately, her own daughter, Maggie, forces her to end her self-imposed exile when she shows up at the beach with a muffin in the oven, but without her pathetic boyfriend, Gabe (whom Alice thought was wonderful).  Predictably, Kathleen rushes off to Maine to confront Maggie and, just as predictably, family sparks fly. (Maggie is a character over whom debates will rage. For the record, I found her as cloying as Gen Xers can be when they seek to shift the blame for all their troubles to anyone in the world except themselves.)

As a family drama, Maine is first rate. Sullivan has a great ear for dialogue and she also has a gift for observing small details that make ordinary things seem extraordinary. The novel is certainly open to the charge of being cluttered, as if Sullivan became so enamored of things she’s contemplated that she felt the need to force fit them into the plot. You will find echoes of the Catholic Church sex scandals, the Bulger family, Boston politics, and the devastating 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in which 492 people died. (And one suspects she’s eliding the 2003 Warwick, Rhode Island fire with some of that.) The book also feels claustrophobic when it moves to Boston or New York, as if it needs the Maine air to breathe. Okay, sure, but this is still a crisp novel, a proverbial page-turner that’s filled with memorable characters, skin-squirming situations, and quotable lines. It topped my summer reading list, but this Smith College graduate’s second novel makes for compelling reading in any season.

Footnote: I was mightily amused to read some of the comments left on Good Reads. Quite a few people hated the book because they didn’t “like” some of the characters. Duh! That’s the whole damn point. Sullivan hit the self-absorbed middle class with a right hook and Irish Catholicism with a left cross. If you don’t get that, maybe you should build dollhouses!

      

Global Village or Veiled World? Muslims Must Decide

This simply cannot be the global norm!

On September 19, 2012, Harvard professor Karen King dropped a bombshell that is sure to reverberate throughout the West. She held in her hands a scrap of 4^th century Egyptian papyrus that quotes Jesus mentioning his wife! If authenticated, King’s revelation undermines more than two centuries of Roman Catholic teaching and the very rationale for the celibacy of priests.

King’s announcement was greeted with rioting. Angry mobs streamed out of the Vatican and clashed with Italian police. Forty people died before the Italian military forced the surging mob back within the confines of the Vatican. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, an estimated 5,000 Irish-American Catholics forced their way onto the grounds of Harvard University. The mob, marching behind a crucifix-emblazoned banner, toppled the statue of James Harvard as they shouted “Mendacium!” (“A lie!”), a direct slam at Harvard’s motto: “Veritas” (truth). Three Harvard professors were pulled form their classrooms and were beheaded as the crowd chanted, “Jesus is Lord!” Worldwide at least 17 other nations saw protests and a reported 115 people have been killed.

You don’t remember hearing about this? Of course not. It never happened. The only thing that’s true in the above two paragraphs is that Professor King did, indeed, unveil a scrap of papyrus in which Jesus mentions a wife. (She also said that she’s working with teams of experts to make certain it’s not a forgery.) So why did I write this? To contrast it to the ridiculous (and childish) reaction currently occurring in Muslim lands in reaction to, of all things, a YouTube video.

In case you’ve tuned out the news, some jerk in California calling himself Sam Bacile—yeah, I know, where you find a jerk in California?—made a cheap movie in which Mohammed is depicted as a randy ladies’ man and a charlatan. Offensive and needlessly provocative? Of course it is, and you don’t have to be a Political Correctness freak to condemn his actions. But a better reaction is simply to ignore Bacile and allow him to obtain the obscurity he so richly deserves. Instead, Muslims across the globe have stormed U.S. embassies, burned flags, attacked citizens, and have killed at least 30 people. Congratulations! The disgusting and inexcusable carnage aside, the major accomplishments of such actions have been to send thousands of people to YouTube to watch the repulsive video, transform Bacile from an idiot into a civil libertarian, cast Islam in a more negative light than Bacile could have ever done, and encourage copycat parody, such as that found in the French journal Charlie Hebdo, in which Mohammed appears as a naked letch. The reaction to the French cartoons? Why more rioting of course.

Let’s be blunt about the problem here. Muslims must stop allowing fanatics to define them. This sounds clichéd, but it’s true: I know numerous Muslims and they are sweet, loving, devout people. I’d much rather spend time with them and have them as neighbors than the Bible-thumping zealots who attend a nearby church. A lot of people associate riots and murder with all Muslims. That’s very sad and it’s akin to associating all Christians with the bloodthirsty murderers who gun down doctors who perform abortions. But the cartoonist calling himself Luz who drew the French lampoons has a point when he notes that the only time there have been protests over the magazine’s content have been the three times he parodied Islam. He also has a point when he says, “I live under French law. I don’t live under Koranic law. I’m not the one going into the streets with stones and Kalashnikovs.”

I’ve never seen this French magazine, so maybe Luz is a jerk also, but he’s not wrong about his defense. Here’s the deal—we live in the Global Village. That means the world is a marketplace of ideas as well as goods, including the concept of free expression (even if means freedom to be a jerk). If Muslims wish to live in the modern world, they must purge themselves of those who would cast them back to the 10^th century and throw a veil over the rest of the planet. Every religion contains zealots, fools, and those who spread hatred and call it God’s will. What civilized nations do is prosecute such people; they don’t revere them as leaders, prophets, or martyrs. Civilized nations also tolerate everyone’s beliefs. Sort of like what Mohammed said when he told Muslims to respect all “the peoples of the book (Scripture)” and specifically mentioned Jews, Christians, and Sabians!

Muslims have been slandered. Some of it is self-induced; Muslims cannot expect respect when they blaspheme the traditions of others. Remember the Afghan Taliban blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001? Remember the beheading of Daniel Pearl? (A person “of the book.”) How many Muslims nations demand Palestinian statehood? Compare that list to the number that recognizes Israel’s right to exist. Remember the killing of two US soldiers because of a rumor (false as it turned out) that soldiers willfully destroyed Korans? This must stop and Muslims  must take the lead in wiping out those who cast Islam in a murderous light.

If one wishes to live in the Global Village, one must put up with (and learn to ignore) jerks–not because we wish to, but because it’s simply too dangerous to impose any one variety of orthodoxy. So some fool burns a Koran or a Bible. So what? Does this in any way diminish the power of God? Many Americans view the nation’s flag as a sacred symbol. What if, every time protestors in some far-off land desecrated an American flag, the United States sent waves of bombers and Marines to lay waste to the offending nation? Can you say “Armageddon?”

Muslims have a right to be angry when someone disrespects their core beliefs. But civilized people do not resolve their problems with Kalashnikovs. They do, as millions of Christians have done in the wake of the Jesus revelation—they return to those core beliefs for solace. Muslim nations must learn to accommodate difference, even boorish behavior, or they will find themselves persona non grata in the Global Village. The veil of isolation will descend, not from the hands of extremists, but from the Villagers who will ignore them.