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Unlike Michael Medved, I don’t think that you can get AIDS from listening to Tchaikovsky–unless you share the phonograph needle.  So I was not afraid to watch “Brokeback Mountain.”  Yet, after viewing the film, I was dismayed by an unspeakable act.  And I mean that literally:  the actors could not speak.

Heath Ledger mumbled.  I couldn’t understand a word that he was saying.  Granted he is Australian, which is generally acknowledged as the most hideous mutation of English.  So he has that verbal handicap.  Perhaps he was trying to embody the western icon of the “strong, silent type.”  But I could still understand Gary Cooper whenever he grunted “yup.”  Ledger lacked that clarity.

Jake Gyllenhaal was slightly more audible, but it still seemed that he and Ledger were having an incoherence contest.  You know that a film needs subtitles when Randy Quaid sounds the closest to John Gielgud.

“Brokeback Mountain” makes me wonder:  it is the love that dares not speak its name, or just cannot enunciate it?

In 627 a biblical prophecy came true-for a while. Five centuries earlier a Jew-for-Jesus, now remembered as St. John, had predicted a decisive battle between the Empires of the East and the West. The Book of Revelations has been cited as a prediction of the Cold War, September 11th and Rupert Murdoch; however, St. John thought that he writing about Rome and Parthia.

Parthia was Rome’s annoying neighbor to the East. Alexander the Great may have destroyed one Persian empire but with sufficient time and spite the Iranians had created another. Parthia bordered Rome’s Asian provinces and was never shy about raiding them. Of course, Rome retaliated but lost a few armies learning the tactics of desert warfare. The two Empires had already been sparring for a century when John pioneered stream-of-consciousness.

The conflict had lasted nearly two centuries when the Emperor Trajan (53-117) resolved to end it by conquering Mesopotamia. Marching east from Asia Minor, through Armenia (Of course, no one asked the Armenians for permission; no one ever does.) Rome’s army then attacked south along the Euphrates. In a two year campaign (114-115), led personally by Trajan, the Romans conquered Mesopotamia. Unfortunately, the Parthians did not seem to realize that they had been defeated and humiliated. Their forces east of the Tigris were just as annoying as ever. Mesopotamia itself was in continuous rebellion. Trajan died of natural causes-really. The Roman army, hoping to do the same, left Mesopotamia soon after.

And the war continued. Eighty years later, the Emperor Septimus Severus “conquered” Mesopotamia and withdrew two years later. However, the Parthians could hardly feel victorious. Rome had repeatedly sacked their cities but they were in no position to rampage through Italy. Parthia’s leaders realized the futility of their situation and came to one rational conclusion: they needed even more belligerent rulers to fight Rome.

The new dynasty-the Sassanids for you name-droppers-managed to continue the war for another three centuries. Proclaiming themselves as the heirs and avengers of the first Persian Empire, the Sassanids were not merely aggressive and vain; they were lucky. Rome was growing weaker. When the legions were not slaughtering each other in civil war, they were floundering against the barbarian invasions. Rome–divided, diverted and dissipated–could no longer threatened its Iranian nemesis. Indeed, the new Persia was on the attack, rampaging through Rome’s eastern provinces and defeating the legions that Rome could muster. This emboldened Persia demanded tribute and Rome was reduced to paying it.

Byzantium succeeded Rome and continued the policy of appeasement. But if the Byzantines lacked the military resources to thwart the Sassanid empire, they made an art of undermining it. Where there was an idle tribe of barbarians on Persia’s borders, Byzantium would subsidize an invasion. If there were a surplus of Sassanid princes, the Greeks would generously encourage a civil war. Between paying tribute to the Sassanids while subsidizing attacks on them, the Byzantines probably would have found it cheaper to be looted by the Persians.

The Byzantine machinations did achieve a remarkable coup, however. In 590, a deposed Persian king appealed to the Byzantines for support. Always willing to encourage Persian fratricide, the Byzantine Emperor Maurice lent Chosroes II an army and helped restore him to his throne. Chosroes’ response was unusual if not aberrant for a king: sincere gratitude. He established peace between the two kingdoms and dispensed with Persia’s extortion racket. Chosroes, who had overthrown and murdered his own father, behaved like an exemplary son to his Byzantine patron.

And when Maurice was murdered in 602, Chosroes declared war on the usurper: a red-headed and warted miscreant named Phocas. This war was more than the usual Persian exercise in pillage; it was a determined, uncompromising effort to overthrow the usurper. And Phocas certainly was helping the Persians. He executed capable generals, replacing them with idiot relatives. His order to coerce the conversion of Jews set off riots and civil war in the very provinces where the Persians were encroaching. Rather than resisting the invaders, Byzantines were defecting to Chosroes. Persian armies quickly conquered Syria and Asia Minor. The ease of these campaigns convinced Chosroes that he was the rightful successor of Maurice on the Byzantine throne.

However, Chosroes was not the only alternative to Phocas. There were quite a few plots against the usurper, and in 610 one succeeded. The new emperor was Heraclius, and he would live up to his name. His labors included the reorganization of the army, replacing a slapdash, unreliable collection of mercenaries with an uniform system of recruiting, supplying and training an army of Byzantines. This transistion took more than a decade, and during that time the Persians conquered all of Byzantium’s Asian provinces and Egypt. Chosroes now ruled a realm as vast as the first Persian Empire. To his frustration, however, the Mediterranean Sea put up a better defense than Byzantine armies. Since Persia had no navy, Constantinople and her European provinces remained safe.

Chosroes should have realized that he had reached his limits. The Byzantines would have negotiated–after all, they were Byzantines–but Chosroes had become insatiable, mistaking his luck for infallibility. He insisted the war continue, no matter how pointless it had become. He kept an army stationed on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, perhaps waiting for the Mediterranean to dry up.

Chosroes certainly had patience but so did the Byzantines, and they also had a navy. In 622, Heraclius and his new army landed in Asia Minor and began the reconquest. Heraclius had created an army superior to any the Persians could muster. Furthermore, the Emperor gladly entered into unsavory but expedient alliances with Huns and other barbarians. Over the next five years, campaigning in Asia Minor, Armenia (as usual) and Mesopotamia itself, Heraclius’ forces smashed one Persian army after another.

On December 12, 627, near the ruins of Ninevah, Heraclius confronted Persia’s last standing army in Mesopotamia. This would be the decisive battle of the war. Chosroes was not there; his boldness did not extend to personal courage. On the other hand, Heraclius was feeling obnoxiously chipper. When challenged to personal combat by the Persian commander, the 52 year old Emperor accepted. The Persian general must have felt embarrassed to be decapitated by a middle-aged man. And the rest of the Persian army had the same kind of day.

Mesopotamia was at the mercy of the Byzantines. In frustration with Chosroes’ disastrous leadership, rebellion was breaking out in Persia and throughout what was left of the empire. But Chosroes refused to acknowledge the defeat and chaos. The next year his son murdered him. (This was a Sassanid family tradition). Persia then signed an apologetic peace treaty with Byzantium.

Byzantine supremacy would last all of eight years. It had recovered from the Persian invasion but had exhausted its manpower and resources in the effort. The Empire could not withstand a few thousand enthusiastic Arab horsemen who wrested control of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and North Africa. (And they still seem to be the predominant influence there.) Another small but equally zealous Arab force overran what was left of Persia.

So, in the war between Heraclius and Chosroes, Mohammed won.

Edward Hyde may have been the most miserable speechwriter in history.  I don’t mean that he was the worst:  a fifth century Roman orator named Sidonius Apollinarus has that distinction and could be the reason that “ad nauseum” is a Latin term.  No, Edward Hyde was likely the most frustrated, unappreciated and persecuted practitioner of “executive communications.”  (That is the corporate designation for speechwriters; it sounds impressive but discreetly vague, avoiding the impression that our clients require ventriloquists.)

Our poor, sorry Hyde wrote speeches for Britain’s King Charles I.  If you are familiar with his Majesty’s autopsy report, you can deduce that the speeches obviously were not a success.  No, Hyde was not beheaded, too; speechwriters are never worth killing.  But Hyde endured humiliation, disgrace and exile–and that was by his fellow Royalists.

Charles I felt that he had the Divine Right to bully and suppress Parliament; however, he also felt that good manners required some justification for his conduct.  Of course, you can not expect a busy King to spend hours scribbling on parchment, nor could you really expect a Stuart to write an intelligible paragraph.  So Edward Hyde offered his literary assistance to the King.  Hyde had been one of Parliament’s few moderates.  He was neither an obtuse Royalist nor a fulminating Puritan.  When the Civil War began, however, he preferred traditional tyranny to the unforeseen excesses of a Parliamentary mob.

Working with Hyde, the King issued a series of proclamations and pamphlets that justified the Royalist cause in a persuasive and moderate voice.  Charles may even have believed those balanced and temperate words while he was with Hyde.  However, when Charles was in the company of his more belligerent advisors–particularly his battle-axe of a wife, the malleable monarch did what they told him.  That created a dismaying dichotomy:  Charles had the voice of reason and the actions of a thug.  Worse for Charles, his belligerent advisors were far better at starting wars than winning them.

But the war faction did have one success: blaming Hyde.  His moderate writings allegedly sullied the the dignity of the monarchy: a king does not need reason.   If you believed the Queen, Hyde was as great a danger as Cromwell.  For his demeaning rationality and treacherous temperance, Hyde became a pariah at the Court.   A man of Hyde’s character was obviously unfit for government, but he did seem a suitable choice as the official guardian (babysitter) for the Prince of Wales.

Unfortunately, being the moral authority to the future Charles II, Hyde had another hopeless task.  At least, Hyde was not required to write speeches to justify and rationalize the young Prince’s misadventures in Britain and France, the debts and the illegitimate offspring.  (If only he had, Hyde would have been the pioneer of Restoration Comedy.  )  In fact, after the restoration of the monarchy, Charles II bestowed an earldom on his hapless but loyal guardian.  The new Earl of Clarendon was further appointed to the Royal Council where he once again proved a political naif but a convenient scapegoat.  Hyde ended up in exile again; he had plenty of free time to write his memoirs.

At least Hyde ended up with an Earl’s title and income.  Most of us will not have that comforting a retirement package.  Edward Hyde may have been most miserable speechwriter in history but he was a successful failure.

As a corporate speechwriter I am expected to be a dramatist, clairvoyant, alchemist and scapegoat. Please note that I am not a ventriloquist. On the contrary, the dummy tells me what to say.

In the best of circumstances, the writer might actually like the speaker and agree with his or her opinions. Josef Goebbels was lucky that way. However, such compatibility is rare and irrelevant. The speechwriter is a mercenary, serving the needs and whims of the executive ego. For some speakers, we are little more than stenographers. There are a few corporate Cromwells who know exactly what they want to say. They will dictate a precise and detailed outline of their speech, and we just punctuate it.

Unfortunately, most of our speakers make us guess what they mean. The writer customarily interviews the speaker for his or her perspective on and anecdotes about a topic. Too often, the speaker offers a rambling discourse of notions and impressions. Our challenge is to sift this stream of consciousness for any tangible ideas. A momentary musing might become the basis of a speech.

For example, when interviewed on the topic of corporate ethics, one client wondered if there were a difference between ethics and morals. His train of thought did not go past that sentence, but I seized on it. I wrote a speech that recounted the historic and scientific conflict between personal morality and society’s code of ethics. My client was pleased that he had been so profound.

Yet even the best clairvoyant cannot read a blank mind. Our clients often accept speaking engagements without any thought to the topic. One of my speaker simply wanted an excuse to be in Boca Raton in February. When confronted with the requested topic, he had neither expertise nor even a clear opinion. The only way for him to be coherent was to avoid the subject. He ended up delivering 15 minutes of platitudes.

Speakers’ ideas and grammar often are the least of our problems. We also have to indulge their vanity. Coping with the executive ego requires the skills of an alchemist. In catering to this vanity, we endow the speaker with traits and talents that nature didn’t see fit to supply. We add charm and personality on demand.

One client was the buccaneer king of the Chicago futures markets. Having attained the leadership of an exchange, the raspy brawler now wanted to sound like Voltaire. Ya know: “classy.” Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and I lent him a flattering gravitas.

Of course, every speaker wants to be funny. As a modern speechwriter, I am amazed that Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount without starting off with a few golf jokes. Most speakers insist on a humorous introduction. They want to ingratiate themselves with the audience and expect that the jokes will win over the crowd. Humor can be engaging and persuasive, but a string of corny jokes is not a foolproof means of seduction. I still wince at the memory of a banker who wanted his speech to begin with a Dennis Rodman joke. Even if the joke were funny, it would be a baffling introduction to a financial seminar.

Once, however, the absurdity overwhelmed me. I had a client of inordinate dullness. Yet, on one occasion, he was remarkably excited about a speech that he had just heard. A prominent businessman had enchanted the audience with a romantic evocation of his boyhood in North Carolina. My client wanted a speech “just like that.” Unfortunately, the reality was insurmountable. My aspiring rustic was a boychik from Bayonne, N.J. What exactly is the Yiddish word for possum?I suppose that there might be a spiritual affinity between hunting in the Blue Ridge Mountains and stealing hubcaps in Bayonne. Of course, my client could not even offer any hints of a colorful adolescence. I could not fabricate his romantic reverie, and we ended up with 15 minutes of platitudes.

The speechwriter is never at a loss for masochism. We are routinely asked to do the ridiculous and then blamed for it. Yet, our profession has its compensations. We are among the most prestigious name-droppers. (I remember being ignored by a client because he had telephone calls from Cyrus Vance and Benno Schmitt.) Such high-level contacts make us the Brahmins of public relations. If we don’t quite escape the stigma of our fellow flacks, at least we are the most prestigious lepers in the colony.

The Marquis de La Fayette knew that there was more to life than just the minuet and syphilis. Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert Du Motier–as he was known to his friends–wanted to help the American colonists in their heroic struggle for liberty, so long as he could be a major general. However, 19 year-olds were rarely granted that rank–even in an army where competence was irrelevant. Generals usually invested years of fawning sycophancy over some royal dolt or his favorite mistress.

But America was a land of opportunities for the ambitious teenager. He simply had to find the right official to bribe. Of the American emissaries, Arthur Lee was inconveniently ethical. Benjamin Franklin was skeptical although he might have been willing to let Madame Lafayette persuade him. (If historians had to choose”The Father of Our Country“, Franklin would be named in the paternity suit.) However, Silas Deane had an open mind and hand.

Deane was an operator. When the French government wanted to covertly supply the Americans with arms and money, Deane handled the smuggling and the money-laundering. A man with such entrepreneurial skills might be expected to have a few lucrative sidelines. So, if a rich teenager wanted to be a major general, it was just matter of paperwork. The Continental Congress had not given him that authority, but Deane was never one to be stymied by legality. On this day in 1776, Deane conferred on Lafayette the rank of major general.

Of course, the Continental Congress was somewhat surprised when a French teenager arrived in Philadephia and expected command of an army. The Congress was starting to catch on to Deane’s sidelines; it seems that he had issued a number of questionable commissions. Deane was recalled from Paris in November, 1777 and tried for financial irregularities. However, he was too clever to be convicted.

As for Lafayette, he could not be taken seriously but he proved a very likable young man. Congress did not have the heart to be rude. As long as he agreed not to be paid and stayed under the adult supervision of George Washington, Lafayette would be allowed the title of major general. The young marquis could feel like a hero, and George Washington got the world’s fanciest valet.

Some people are famous only for losing: candidate Harold Stassen, explorer Robert Scott, alleged actress Susan Lucci. There is also Gen. George McClellan, who retreated even when he won a battle. This list probably starts with Abel. Archaeologists in Rome have just found the scepter of yet another of these unlustrious souls: the Emperor Maxentius.

Maxentius owes his dubious fame to his dramatic loss of battle, throne and life to his brother-in-law Constantine. (Yes, that Constantine!) Of course, the drama was all due to Constantine and his sudden change of sponsors on the eve of battle. The use of crosses as battle insignia was great product placement for a certain religion.

Constantine may have had friends in high places but he was also the greatest general of his time. Maxentius wouldn’t have even made the top fifty list. He had no qualifications to be an Emperor except for the fact that his father was one. However, even his father wasn’t impressed with Maxentius and had excluded him from the imperial succession. (The old man actually preferred his son-in-law Constantine.)

At the time, the growing threat of the barbarians and the chronic problem with the Persians (that certainly is chronic) had led to an administrative reform of the Empire. There were two co-Emperors, one ruling from Asia Minor and the other from Northern Europe. The Roman Empire had dispensed with Rome. Furthermore, to avert the bloodbaths that usually determined who would be the next emperor, the two co-emperors would appoint their successors.

As his successor in the West, the Emperor Maximian preferred the House of Constantine to his own dynasty. However, the overlooked Maxentius felt that nepotism had its rights and the snubbed 28 year-old used his allowance and trust fund to bribe the garrison of Rome. In 306, Maxentius was proclaimed Emperor–at least in Rome–but much of Italy embraced him. The country had grown tired of absent emperors, some of whom had even threatened to end Rome’s tax-free perks: its bread and circuses.

Galerius, the legitimate Emperor of the East, attempted to crush the revolt. Upon entering Italy, however, the imperial army founded itself ambushed with bribes. Unable to resist, the army left Italy. Galerius then decided that this was an issue for the Emperor of the West.

Constantine had the title but he needed Italy for the authenticity. In 312 he invaded. His army would not be susceptible to bribes. When Roman legionnaires adopt Christian insignia at the Emperor’s command, they evidently revered or feared him more than than the Gods. Maxentius commanded a far larger force but most of his soldiers’ experience of combat was shaking down shopkeepers. And Maxentius was not even that proficient. He wedged his army into a tactical disaster, stationed in front of a deep river with only one rickety bridge as an avenue for retreat.

Can’t you guess what happened? After sufficient mauling by Constantine’s veterans, Maxentius’ amateurs panicked, the weight of the chaotic retreat collapsed the bridge, and Maxentius was on it at the time. His body was fished out of the water the next day. Constantine was now the undisputed Emperor of the West; and now was free to promote his theological quirks. (He had to kill another brother-in-law before he ruled the entire empire.)

Of course, losing to Constantine is why anyone remembers Maxentius. Fourth century Rome was filled with rich mediocrities; they comprised the Senate. However, Maxentius was not content to enjoy his inadequacies. His ambition far surpassed his ability, but his amazing presumption and dramatic failure do entitle him to history’s sarcasm. And he would have preferred that to obscurity.

In the good old days, one of the few pleasures of being in an airport was being accosted by Hare Krishnas. If I had the spare time–and the airlines always guaranteed that I did–I would ever so innocently ask my would-be missionary about the practice of “suttee.”

Western literature has its macabre romance of a widow dying of a broken heart. In India, suttee ensured it. The widow was expected to hurl herself on her late husband’s funeral pyre. Although this practice is now being espoused by University of Chicago economists as a way to “reform” social security, the British were appalled by it. Using Imperialism in a rare instance of benevolence, the British outlawed suttee on this day in 1829.

Even today there are still reports of suttee in India, but it is no longer officially sanctioned or included in tourist itineraries.

p.s. Of course, widowers were never expected to throw themselves on a funeral pyre. They were free to remarry a future piece of kindling.

p.p.s. The Taj Mahal was built by a Moslem.

Oh What a Beautiful Mourning

If only Chile still had political prisoners, Augusto Pinochet would have no trouble obtaining a donor heart.  The retired tyrant’s heart, obviously unused, is succumbing to atrophy.  Pinochet has received last rites; the priest probably insisted on a polygraph with the confession.

Assuming that God finally does something right, Pinochet will receive a state funeral either in Myanmar or the Bahamas.  That depends whether he wishes to be buried nearest his politics or his bank accounts.   

Season’s Bleatings

A thousand years ago, the children of Scandinavia looked up to the sky awaiting the arrival of a jolly, boisterous spirit and his animal drawn cart.  If the children had been good, they would be rewarded with weapons and attack plans for the British Isles.  Thor and his goat cart would eventually be replaced by a migrant deity willing to work longer hours, deal with diseases and the other drudgery that no self-respecting Aesir would touch.

Yet, Swedes still celebrate the Christmas season with little straw goats, a symbol of their former theology.  Perhaps in Scandinavian Nativity scenes the Virgin Mother is wearing a breast plate and a horned helmet.