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When I heard the news that John Roberts had suffered a serious fall, I assumed that it was just another incident of auto-asphyxiation. (Never try hanging yourself while wearing high heels.) Now, however, I genuinely impressed by the remarkable diagnosis that he received. You cannot say “epilepsy” because the Bush Administration attributes that affliction to demonic possession. No, the Chief Justice has only had an benign idiopathic seizure. That sounds merely like a tantrum, which no doubt was caused by that terrorist yenta Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

So we can be reassured that John Roberts is receiving the best in healthcare and euphemisms.

A more critical condition would be a malignant idiocratic seizure–which is the diagnosis of the Bush Adminstration.

A few days ago, while at a lovely wedding reception, a couple came up to me and said that I looked familiar. Being a megalomaniac, I suggested what seemed the obvious reason: “Are you fans of Jeopardy?” However, they were not. So now we had a mystery. I then offered this explanation: “Well, I do look like half of the members of the 1918 Politburo.”

They had no idea what I meant, but the high school principal next to me laughed out loud. A less esoteric me should have noted my resemblance to the cast of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Any physical similarity between Larry David, Leon Trotsky and me can be attributed to 4000 years of inbreeding.

In fact, the Soviets took advantage of that ethnic homogenity to explain an embarrassing presence. When I was in Moscow in 1975 and touring a museum of the Revolution, I saw Leon Trotsky in a few photos. He was too close to Lenin to be easily edited out. With surprising tact—paranoia does have it virtues–I refrained from confronting my Intourist Guide with the evidence of Trotsky’s importance. Instead I simply asked her, “Who is that?” She must have been prepared for that question because she immediately responded “That is Jacob Sverdlov.”

(Sverdlov had the good luck to die of cholera in 1919, so he avoided being killed by Stalin.)

So Trotsky was being identified as Sverdlov. If you have seen one Jew….

You’re only as old as you think; but is everyone else as old as you imagined?

Have you ever wonder why Cyrano de Bergerac, for all his brilliance, acts like a hormone-mad teenager? Of course, you could rationalize that love makes us all goofy adolescents. You can spare yourself all that postulating: Cyrano happens to be 19 when the play begins.

How old was Hannibal at the start of his Punic War? No one over 30 would think of talking elephants across the Alps. If Hannibal had waited until he was 31, he would have looked for the best shipping rates.

How old was Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers.? Dumas, himself, teases the reader about it. Allowing for my paraphrase, the author says “You probably are thinking of Richelieu as the old invalid, the brilliant mind trapped in the crippled body. As a matter of fact, Richelieu now is only 37 and an excellent horseman, although he is starting to feel a slight stiffness in his legs.”

In Henry IV, part I, Shakespeare portrays Henry Percy, alias Hotspur, as an impetuous but heroic youth who is the rival and the dramatist contrast to wily if reptilian Prince Hal. However, you must remember that Shakespeare was a terrible historian. Hotspur actually 38 in 1402. He was old enough to be the father of Prince Hal; in fact, he was a year older than Henry IV!

Imagine Adam Sandler as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof? No, I am not trying to justify Anti-Semitism. Although the role of Tevye would require more talent than Sandler possesses, the actor is not too young for the part. At the time of the musical’s setting, Tevye probably was in his late 30s or early 40s. Remember that a bar mitzvah used to be literal; at 13, one was expected to be an adult. Tevye–assuming that he was physically functional and not unusually repugnant–would have been married by his mid-teens and a father well before he was 20.

But if Hollywood is planning to make a movie of Das Kapital, volume 1, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are about the right age to play Marx and Engels.

Have you ever wondered why most Greeks don’t look like Colin Farrell or Val Kilmer?

Of course, you could say that Oliver Stone is a lunatic; and that would end the argument. However, if you further added that Macedonians are not Greeks, then I would venture this correction. In antiquity, Macedonians were the equivalent of redneck Greeks. They would have fewer teeth than Athenians, and would probably paste hardware decals on their chariots. Nonetheless, they would have been–barely (over Demosthenes’ battered body)–included in the Hellenic world.

Which brings us back to our original question: why do Greeks look like Armenians? (Come on: you can’t tell the difference, either.) The fact is that they are Armenian, the descendants of a massive relocation program undertaken by the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I.

By the ninth century, Greece was largely unpopulated. Five centuries of barbarian invasions were not great for demographics. Those Hellenes who had not been massacred or carried off into slavery huddled behind the walls of the few remaining cities. Yet across the Bosphorus, Anatolia was thriving. (Visigoths, Huns, Bulgars and Slavs evidently couldn’t swim.) Emperor Nicephorus, who was a financier by training, decided to redistribute Anatolia’s surplus population to Greece. The Armenian provinces had people to spare, and the Imperial coercion was mitigated with the promise of free and rich lands.

Of course, there still was a problem with Bulgarian invasions, but the Emperor intended to take care of that. He certainly tried; today is the 1196th anniversary of Nicephorus’ death and defeat of his army. Mountain passes in Bulgaria can be tricky. Nicephorus was a much better accountant than general. He apparently also made an excellent goblet. The Bulgar Khan used Nicephorus’ skull as a drinking vessel.

Nonetheless, Nicephorus’ head had thought of a way to stabilize and revive Greece. It is just that Greeks no longer look like Greek Gods.

Let us render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and killed perhaps two-thirds of the Judean population but they did have family values. They were willing to enslave Jewish women as well as men. Historians once thought that only men comprised the tens of thousands of deported prisoners who, at least among the survivors, would become the founders of Europe’s Ashkenazi Jews. (Gentile women presumably were picked up along the way; apparently, Jewish men were always considered a catch–they don’t drink and they are willing to beg for sex.)

However, a recent report by the American Journal of Human Genetics has found that the Ashkenazi community might always have had Jewish mother jokes. According to the study of the matrilineal mitrochondria, at least forty percent of Ashkenazi descendants have had 3000 years of Jewish mothers. Of course, that also indicates that perhaps half of the Ashkenazi should look a little Gentile–or at least better than an Arab.

Let me explain what actually happened. In the fourth century, when Sam was just the traveling toga tailor for the Roman garrisons along the Rhine and Danube, he had a Jewish wife: Ruth. But business was good, and in time Sam became the Toga King of Pannonia. Buying himself a Mercedes chariot wasn’t enough. He got himself a trophy wife: 5′10″ Inge. Ruth got some alimony and the satisfaction that her children were brighter than Inge’s.

And now with the appropriate fanfare of shofars—

According to the inexplicable Jewish calendar, today is Tish B’Av, a time of mourning and avoidance of Italian food. On this day, both the First and the Second Temple were destroyed.

In 586 B.C.J.(Before Cousin Jesus) Iraq–alias Babylonia–really did have weapons of mass destruction, and they were used on Jerusalem. The First Temple, the one built by King Solomon, was leveled.

The Babylonians got their comeuppance from the Persians in 538 BCJ. Contrary to the Greek propaganda, the Persians were pretty nice guys and let their Jewish subjects rebuilt the Temple in 515 BCJ. This was the Second Temple.

It was nothing fancy. The Jews couldn’t afford much and there was that prohibition of graven images. Herodotus didn’t consider Jerusalem worth a visit; in fact, all he said of the province was that the people were obsessed with circumcision.

Persia was overthrown by Alexander; the Hellenistic kingdoms were conquered by the Romans, and the Jews remained obsessed with circumcision and the theology attached to it. Rome subcontracted Judea to a clever fiend named Herod. Trying both to impress his Roman masters and to ingratiate himself with his Jewish victims, Herod undertook a major expansion of the Second Temple in 19 BCJ. The wily ruler built the expanded structure n such a way that it could double as a fortress–in case the Jews were not that grateful to him.

Ironically, the Jews were very grateful and used the Temple for their last-stand in the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD (Anno Domination). Of course, the Romans were neither tactful nor sentimental, so they destroyed the Second Temple too. The Arch of Titus in Rome commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Jewish nation.

Gosh, I guess we didn’t take the hint.

Thorough cynic that I am, I now expect gratuitous product placement in movies. In fact, I am surprised that old films are not being reedited to accommodate commercial endorsements….

For instance, imagine this addition to “Spartacus”:

Julius Caesar: How can you crucify 6000 slaves?
Crassus: You can accomplish all your carpentry needs with just one stop at Home Depot! By the way, you look great in that toga.
Caesar: It’s Hanes!

Nonetheless, last Saturday I witnessed what may have been the newest and most diabolical form of product placement. The characters in “Little Miss Sunshine” just had to let you know that they drank Sprite. Of course, these characters happen to be grotesque. If they drank Sprite, you would be inclined to avoid that product. Either someone in Sprite’s marketing department is a complete imbecile…or someone in Seven-Up’s marketing department is an evil genius.

Yes, perhaps Seven-Up paid to poison the image of its competitor. “Sprite–the drink preferred by misfits and failures. The lemon-lime for losers.”

Well, two can play that game. In Tom Cruise’s next film, “Valkyrie”, expect Hitler to be drinking Seven-Up.

“BUSH ALTERS RULES FOR C.I.A. INTERROGATIONS”

Here are the administration’s guidelines:

Waterboarding is not torture

BUT

Testifying under oath is.

A number of German officers presented Adolf Hitler with a retirement package…actually it was a briefcase. Of course, Prussian subtlety is an oxymoron, so it never occurred to those Junkers that Adolf might have preferred being coaxed rather than assassinated.

Let’s face it, tyrants are not that easy to fire. (Okay, Mussolini was. The Fascist Board of Directors could have ousted him by simply hiding his Gucci boots.) Hitler would have needed positive reenforcement, pro-active proactivities, and all the other HR gibberish. A Fuhrer wants his perks.

First, to cope with the shock of retirement, Adolf might need counseling. Carl Jung would have been available. (The rest of the psychiatric community seemed to be ethnically incompatible.)

Then, Hitler should have been enticed to take a vacation. Destroying civilization can be exhausting. He might have enjoyed a world cruise in a U-Boat. Charles Lindbergh could have flown him to Argentina, where Juan and Evita were awaiting with open and heiling arms. Joseph Kennedy had a guest cottage at Hyannisport (but he probably would have tried hitting on Eva Braun). Pius XII would have enjoyed the sound of yodeling in the Vatican. There were many places where Adolf could get away from it all.

Finally, a relatively young man like Adolf might want a second career. The man certainly was eminently qualified for any number of positions: celebrity spokesman for Mercedes-Benz, host of the Bayreuth Opera broadcasts, or Dean of Students at Dartmouth.

These offers should have been in Hitler’s retirement package rather than just an insufficient amount of explosives. No wonder he felt snubbed and refused to take a hint. If only the Wehrmacht had been run by MBAs, they would have known the German for “golden parachute.”

Of course, a MBA-run army would have avoided this entire situation by losing the war to Poland in 1939.

On July 19, 1870 France declared war on Prussia, starting the Franco-Prussian War.

Louis Napoleon evidently had his own Neo-Conservatives who guaranteed that the French army would Can-Can its way to Berlin.

In fact, the Emperor decided to lead the chorus line himself. Unfortunately, the charming bumbler had delusions of competence; he inherited the name Bonaparte but none of his uncle’s military genius. His army of 120.000 soldiers never got further than Sedan, where the entire force was captured by the Germans. And this French army was supposed to be rescuing another French army that was trapped at Metz.

To Bismarck’s amazement, the French weren’t getting the hint. Having lost the Emperor, the French government now proclaimed itself a republic and vowed to continue the war. The French raised five more armies, which meant that the Germans had to take the trouble to crush four more of them. (The fifth army survived by fleeing to Switzerland.) Paris fortified itself and withstood a siege for three months; before the Parisians finally surrendered, they ate the animals in the city zoo.

Bismarck certainly was making the best of the situation. He had used the war to coalesce the German states into one unified–under Prussian hegemony–empire. The new Kaiser was vacationing at Versailles, while Bismarck was enjoying even more luxury as the uninvited guest at the Rothschild estate outside of Paris. Bismarck himself had turned down Versailles, quipping “Why live like a King when you can live like a God.”

And the Chancellor was keeping a running tab of the expenses, and he had every intention of making France pay. Had France surrendered along with its hapless Emperor, Bismarck would have been satisfied with minor border adjustments. But after 10 months of war, Bismarck now demanded Alsace and Lorraine and a staggering indemnity of 6 billion gold Francs.

Although the unwelcomed guest of the French Rothschilds, Bismarck generally was more deferential to the family. Their man in Berlin, Gerson Bleichroder, was Bismarck’s banker and financial advisor. As you would gather from his name, Gerson was not exactly an Aryan aristocrat. Bleichroder played a role in the negotiations between a vanquished France and a vindictive Prussia. When informed of Germany’s demand for six billion gold Francs, the head of the French delegation protested, “If we started counting from the time of Jesus Christ, we would not reach such a sum.” Bismarck retorted–in French–”That’s why I have Bleichroder. He started counting long before Jesus Christ.”