October 20, 460:  Charisma Has Its Limits

The Byzantine Empress Eudocia may well have been Arianna Huffington in a previous life.  A classical scholar originally named Athenais, in 420 she converted herself into a Christian in order to marry the dull-minded Emperor Theodosius II. The marriage and crown did not give her complete control of the empire, however.  Athenais/Eudocia had to contend with her belligerent sister-in-law Pulcheria.  The older sister of Theodosius, Pulcheria was a very political nun and resented the secular, dubiously Christian empress.

You could count on the two women to be on opposite sides of every issues.  Since Pulcheria had one view of the Trinity, Eudocia felt obliged to disagree.  If the Imperial Nun wanted to persecute Jews and heretics, guess who protected them.  In this duel, Eudocia might have had an amatory advantage with the Emperor, except that she was only producing healthy daughters.  (No one thought of blaming the Emperor.)  Torn between two domineering women, Theodosius actually arrived at a Solomonic decision.  After two decades of this girl gang warfare, he let an eunuch run the Empire, and the eunuch expelled both women from court.  Pulcheria retired to a convent near Constantinople where she brooded and plotted.  Eudocia went on a grand tour, charmed them in the provinces, and awaited her comeback.

Now having only to worry about the Huns and the Persians, Theodosius should have enjoyed the respite.  One day in 450 while out riding, he apparently decided to land on his spine.  In the succession sweepstakes, Eudocia may have had  charisma but Pulcheria had proximity.  She was back at court and quickly allied to a general; the two even got married, giving a dynastic advantage to the general’s claim to the throne.  (The general, now emperor, deferred to Pulcheria’s continued vow of chastity; but since she was 51, he couldn’t have felt that deprived.)

As for the eunuch who had exiled Pulcheria, he did not enjoy a peaceful or long retirement.  And for some reason, Eudocia decided to stay in the provinces, devoting herself to writing and charitable works.  The contemplative life proved healthy; she outlived Pulcheria by seven years and died this day in 460.

However, the dynasty and the turmoil did not end with her.  Eudocia’s daughter, Eudoxia, took after her mother: a wily, political creature. Unfortunately, Eudoxia was in a far-less stable environment. Her husband, Valentian III of the Western Empire, was mercurial rather than docile; in a tantrum, he killed his best general (at a time when Rome had a real need for any competence.) Valentian was soon dead and Eudoxia was coerced into marrying the usurper. The historians and gossips of the time claimed that Eudoxia invited the Vandals to liberate her. If Genseric even needed an excuse to sack Rome, he certainly would have accepted Eudoxia’s offer.

Eudoxia and her daughter Eudocia (originality was not a trait in that family) were part of the Vandals’ plunder. The dowager Empress was allowed to return to the Eastern Empire. Her daughter, however, was obliged to marry the son of Genseric, Hunneric. In time, the resulting offspring became king of the Vandals.

It certainly was not quite the throne that Athenais had in mind.

Today is the anniversary of the Worst Day in the Stock Market.  At the time, I was a speechwriter at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and so a witness to a surreal day in the markets. From TheStreet.com, here are my recollections of that dramatic day and its ridiculous aftermath.

The cleric, statesman and rogue Abbe Sieyes was once asked what he did during the French Revolution. He succinctly replied, “I survived.” In the aftermath of Oct. 19, 1987, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange could have expressed the same grim satisfaction.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22%, that day. A panic-stricken market literally could not sell stocks fast enough; the New York Stock Exchange lacked both the technology and the nerves for the onslaught. Its stocks opened late, and throughout the day, NYSE stock quotes were either old or wishful thinking.

Yet, at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the S&P 500 futures pit opened on time. Its traders braved the deluge of sell orders and maintained a market for stock index futures. Trading volume set a record; it was twice the daily average. Frantic investors short-sold the futures, trying to protect their stock holdings against further declines. Aggressive investors also short-sold the futures; they hoped to make a profit in a collapsing market. The CME staff worked 19-hour shifts to process the transactions. By the end of that tumultuous week, a relieved CME was planning a self-congratulatory T-shirt for its traders and staff. But, while the worst was over, the absurd was just beginning.

Someone had to be blamed for the stock market crash. The media demanded it. Of course, the obvious suspect was the NYSE. Elderly Democrats still blamed the New York exchange for the Depression. So, in a wily pre-emptive strike against its detractors, Wall Street proclaimed itself the unsuspecting victim of the ruthless Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The NYSE had a rather apocalyptic interpretation of the CME action in futures that fateful week. To its mind, Henry James had been mugged by Al Capone: the selling of the futures created a cascade of plunging stock prices. Machiavellian investors shorted the futures and then sold their stocks, pressuring more investors to dump their portfolios, panicking the rest of mankind to sell everything at any price. In this way, the NYSE compared its wholesome, time-honored stocks to Chicago’s venal, reckless futures. The trust funds of innocent orphans were ruined while the brutish traders of Chicago chortled.

The media pandered to this narrative of the refined old New York market bludgeoned by a neanderthal CME. Television’s stock footage always showed the front of the NYSE, its facade of a classical temple. The public imagined the exchange as an elegant private club; amid its Edwardian decor, an Astor and a Vanderbilt might negotiate a stock price when not reminiscing about hangovers at Yale.

In contrast, the CME had a vulgar image. Stock footage depicted a pit of frenzied traders, lunging at the camera as if they could reach through the television and assault viewers. Those flailing hand signals might be amusing, but wary onlookers inferred obscene or satanic meanings. In the wake of the ’87 crash, the integrity and purpose of stock index futures were attacked. The Wall Street Journal sneered at “Chicago’s ‘Shadow Markets,’ ” a blunt aspersion of the exchange’s integrity. The public did not understand futures or options, but it knew one thing for certain: If those markets were respectable, they would have been in New York.

The CME was not an obliging scapegoat. It held a series of press conferences and seminars to justify the value and efficiency of the futures market. Free food was provided to entice media attendance. Confronted with the CME’s detailed explanation and ponderous evidence, the reporters were bored stiff. Imagine the exchange’s predicament: Trying to teach the Black-Scholes formula for financial derivatives to an audience of English majors. The CME was asking to be hated.

Having made no favorable impression on the media, the CME was driven to irrational desperation: It hired a public relations firm. The exchange thus entrusted its reputation to flacks: people who lack the stamina for journalism, the creativity for advertising and the coordination for three-card monte. The CME chose Hill & Knowlton, a firm famous for “crisis management.” In other words, Hill & Knowlton assisted the notorious, including the Teamsters and the Church of Scientology. (As corporate luck would have it, the NYSE was also a client of the New York office of H&K. Of course, the Chicago office of H&K dismissed any possible conflict of interest.)

According to the official history of the CME (Bob Tamarkin’s The Merc: The Emergence of a Global Financial Powerhouse), H&K advised its hapless client to play the repentant sinner — namely, by confessing to an unintentional role in the crash and making an earnest plea for more federal regulation of the futures markets. Being traders, the CME leaders knew how to cut their losses in the market; however, they were not prepared to misrepresent themselves and grovel, even if that strategy would gratify the media’s prejudice.

While (according to Tamarkin) “Merc officials had lost faith in the outside public relations effort,” the exchange still hoped to make itself presentable to the doubting public. CME’s traders generally appeared as howling slobs, but the exchange’s chairman, Jack Sandner, was articulate and dapper. Taking over where H&K left off, CME’s media department booked Sandner on national television, where he could beam a congenial image of the CME across the land. This strategy was sound, but the scheduling was indiscriminate. Jack Sandner thought that he would be appearing on ABC’s Nightline. There was a significant change in format, however, and Sandner found himself on a show with the Muppets.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange gave up on public relations and resigned itself to being ugly and misunderstood. It would never be as popular or as pampered as the New York Stock Exchange.

But at least the CME stopped being the scapegoat for the October ’87 crash. A presidential task force released the Brady Commission Report in January, 1988, and its harshest criticism was leveled at the New York Stock Exchange. The elegant old club had succumbed to panic: “As with people in a theater when someone yells ‘Fire!’ these sellers all ran for the exit in October, but it was large enough to accommodate only a few,” the report mused. Yet, the media never pilloried the NYSE. And one can see why: With such grandeur, who needs competence?

copyrighted: TheStreet.com

p.s.  And if you prefer ancient history and elephants, today offers another anniversary:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/19/bc-comics-2/

After a wonderful concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I was left with a remarkable insight:  Gustav Mahler is the Philip Roth of music.  Of course, there is the obvious and essential similarity: they are both brilliant, nasty Jewish boys.  But couldn’t the same be said of Karl Marx and St. Paul?  Perhaps, but unlike Gus and Phil, no one would say that Charlie or Saul were funny.  (And whatever Saul’s neuroses, none was caused by women.)

However, the works of Roth and Mahler are amazingly parallel.  Mahler’s First Symphony, with its cruel parody of Klezmer music, is the equivalent of “Goodbye Columbus.”  Gustav was proclaiming that there was more to him than being Jewish.  No, he was a child of nature and a man of the world.  However, by his Seventh Symphony, the world had convinced him that he was still just a Jew.  That, and the adulteries of his young, attractive shiksa wife, goaded him to compose a portrait of a dystopic world.

Yes, he still has evocations of nature but they seem desperate respites between shrill waltzes and sinister Germanic marches.  In his misery, Mahler created a brilliant satire of Austria-Hungary, a requiem kaddish.  His friend Dr. Freud might have reassured Mahler, “Yes, life is meshuggah, your marriage is a humiliation, and your career a torture, but that’s no reason to think that the Empire is about to collapse and disintegrate.”

The symphony premiered in 1908.  In this case, Mahler made a better diagnosis than Freud.

October 17, 1346:  The Battle of Neville’s Cross

King David II of Scotland thought that he was being clever. Imagining that the English army would be spending the next hundred years fighting in France, the sneaky Scotsman invaded his presumably defenseless neighbor. On this day in 1346, at the battle of Neville’s Cross, the English Home Guard could only amass 3500 retirees and 4-Fs to face 12,000 of Scotland’s stoutest lads. However, the English hobby of archery evidently proved more useful than the Scots’ caber toss. (You really could not expect the English to await patiently for a log to fall on them.)

The Scots were routed and King David II was captured. He would spend the next 11 years as an English prisoner, while the Scots and the English negotiated over his ransom. The Scottish opening bid likely was 8 sheep and a gallon of oatmeal. Scotland finally acceded to the sum of 16,000,000 pence. (The Scots refused to think in terms of paying pounds.) Of course, it hardly mattered because the Scots reneged anyway.

King David was actually rather lucky. Most of his successors died fighting the English: James II, James IV and James V. Mary Queen of Scots did not exactly fight the English but she ended up just as dead. James III had the originally to be killed in a civil war with his son, who evidently was in a hurry to be James IV.

Republican congressional candidate Rich Iott is bewildered by the hostile reaction to his fondness for Nazi SS uniforms.  The poor man just couldn’t think of another way to express his enthusiasm for beer and marzipan.  Well, I can empathize.  After watching “Going My Way”, I thought it perfectly natural to impersonate Torquemada.  (His way of getting people to reach high notes was as effective as Bing Crosby’s.)  The restraining order from the Archdiocese has persuaded me otherwise.  Now wiser, I can suggest to Mr. Iott a number of historical roles where he still get away with mass murder. 

For instance, he could be a Crusader.  Both the costumes and religious wars are chic.  Even if Mr. Iott can’t find any Saracen impersonators, he can always stage a siege of  Dearborn, Michigan.  He can also attack colleges as bastions of heresy.  (The Cathars really weren’t liberals, but none of them are left to protest.  That Crusade was a success.)  The Greek Orthodox are also fair game; robbing a coffee shop could be considered a reenactment of sacking Constantinople.  As for the Jews, those massacres are well past the statute of limitations; Eric Cantor might offer his endorsement as well as thanks for not killing him.

But if Iott would like a historical role that expresses family values, hatred of liberals, and a successful healthcare policy, he should impersonate Catherine de Medici.  Having nine children and sponsoring the massacre of Huguenots, Catherine de Medici embodies the Republican pro-life platform.  She also is remembered for her innovative way of providing medicine.  Laced into books and gloves as well as delicious additions to meals, her pharmaceutical treatments were remarkably effective.  Mr. Iott could recommend a similar program for Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

And if Mr. Iott tires of portraying Catherine de Medici, he can use the same dress to impersonate J. Edgar Hoover.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/15/laffaire-and-balanced-2/

School cafeterias to try psychology in lunch line

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced what it called a major new initiative Tuesday, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids’ use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity.

A fresh approach is clearly needed, those behind the effort say.

About one-third of children and teens are obese or overweight. Bans on soda and junk food have backfired in some places. Some students have abandoned school meal programs that tried to force-feed healthy choices. When one school district put fruit on every lunch tray, most of it ended up in the garbage.

When dealing with the adolescent mind, remember that there is no such thing.  It is a cauldron of hormones, overheated with anxieties and fears.  If you want the young to improve their eating habits, try a combination of temptation and terror.

First, convince the students that there is a direct correlation between the food’s appearance and theirs.  What 12 year-old girl wouldn’t want to improve her melons?  And boys would see the value of carrots and bananas.

Now, to discourage consumption of the wrong foods, create a traumatic identification with them.  Next to the pizza, post photos of lepers, the hideously deformed or the columnists of the Weekly Standard.  For added emphasis, have the kitchen staff work nude.

Finally, and admittedly this is a radical idea, but how about not serving junk food in the first place.  Since when are public schools a free market?  I don’t recall having much freedom of choice in the curriculum.  No one offered me the choice of taking geometry or reading Playboy Magazines.  (“Really, Eugene” chided his guidance counselor, “Geometry will be more useful in the long run.”)  I did take geometry and I assure you that I remember more about the centerfolds from the Sixties.  (Sue Bernard was the first Jewish one.)

So, forget about offering our students a choice.  Find out what the high school students in China are eating, and force-feed it to our brats.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/14/hastings-makes-wastings-3/

October 12, 1492:  Christopher Columbus Is Killed by the Aztec Navy

At least, that is what happened in an alternate, more logical universe.  In our three-dimensions Columbus simply mistook the Bahamas for Japan.  Other than desperation, he had no reason to think so.  The Arawaks did not exactly look Japanese.  Both the Mongol invasions and Marco Polo had provided Europeans with a fairly accurate stereotype of the Oriental appearance.  And even if the Japanese were just a third-rate, hand-me-down imitation of China, the Arawaks still failed any cultural or sartorial comparison.  On the other hand, if Columbus acknowledged his obvious failure, a very disappointed King Ferdinand might have turned the Genoese over to Torquemada.  Yes, the flammable Columbus was safer to insist that he had landed at the nudist colony of Kyoto.

And that is why Italian-Americans celebrate October 12th or at least its nearest Monday.  Columbus might have appreciated the attention but he certainly would have wondered why those people were claiming to be Italian.  Genoa and Naples may have shared a peninsula, but nothing else.  As any Lombard, Tuscan, Roman or Venetian would have agreed, the real Italy only extended as far south as Gaeta.  Beyond that–Campania, Calabria and Sicily–was western Greece.  Ironically, those Neapolitans, Calabrians and Sicilians (the forebears of most Italian Americans) would have agreed.  They did think of themselves as Greeks.  When Rome was just an obscure village Sicily and Southern Italy were valued regions of the Hellenistic world.  Naples originally was Neopolis, and Athens lost the Peloponnesian War because of its disastrous campaign in Sicily.

This Hellenic identification continued in the Middle Ages. The Byzantines held Sicily until the Arabs invaded in 827; and the Greeks and Sicilians put up such a tenacious resistance that the Moslem conquest of the island took more than a century. Indeed, the Moslems were too exhausted to effectively threaten the Italian mainland.

Southern Italy remained Byzantine until the 11th century, when a less heralded but equally profitable Norman invasion conquered the region. The final schism between Rome and Constantinople began at that time when the Catholic Church, under the auspices of those Norman parishioners, began appointing clergy in what had been Greek Orthodox dioceses.  Even after the loss of their Italian provinces, the Byzantines maintained their covert ties to the Sicilians and Southern Italians. In the 13th century, a weakened Constantinople could no longer reconquer its lost lands but it could help determine who would rule them. A French dynasty in Southern Italy seemed more hostile than its Aragonese rival. Demonstrating a genius for conspiracy that our CIA would envy, in 1282 the Byzantines helped organize an uprising against the French that we know as “The Sicilian Vespers.” The French were driven out, and the Aragonese moved in.  They then would spend the next two centuries dueling for control of Southern Italy, leaving the Byzantines free of further threats from the West.  (The Turks were coming from the East.)

Even today,  in isolated areas of Southern Italy the populace speaks a dialect of Greek.  So Columbus certainly would wonder why all these Byzantines were claiming to be his paisanos.

Times are tough, so I have had to take a job as the drama critic for Fox News.   Here is my first review.

Once again Public Television and those fancy English writers show their contempt for American values, especially normal sex, with a heavy-handed portrayal of a working class family.  The dialogue is unintelligible, no doubt PBS’ idea of Redneck accents, so I could barely understand the plot of “Mac and Beth”.  They seem to be a struggling couple. Mac apparently is a migrant gas worker.  First, he is working for Methane of Glamis, then for Methane of Cawdor.  Beth thinks he can do better.  So he sees these three social workers, who get him into some management program.  

But even that evidently doesn’t bring in much more money.  He still can’t afford cable television.  With lousy reception, Mac can’t tell “Is this a dagger which I see before me?”  Beth apparently has a job as a manicurist but must take her work too seriously.  Mac’s workplace seems to have a lot of industrial accidents and, without socialized European healthcare, everyone has to walk around like a corpse.  (By the way, doesn’t Banquo sound like a Hispanic name?  Mac’s entitled to his suspicions.)  

The play, reflecting the social bias of British liberals and PBS subscribers, also offers a none-too-subtle attack on American education.  What happened to Mrs. MacDuff certainly is an outlandish criticism of home schooling.  We know in real America the children would be better armed than bureaucrats from the Department of Education.

Of course, Mac and Beth end badly but nothing happens to the three social workers.   They are still around to interfere in our lives, corrupting us with their big government liberal promises.  And you will hear the same story tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  It is a tale told by Fox News.

Hollywood has always defeated the Vikings. There has yet to be a good movie about the Norse adventurers and marauders.

(No, you can’t count “The Virgin Spring.” Bergmann’s film is set at a time contemporary to the last Vikings, but it deals with the sedate Scandinavians. These are the ones who stay home, make Lutefisk and observe the new, allegedly more passive theology.)

I have seen four films that attempt to be Viking sagas.

The 13th Warrior might actually be a docu-drama: the truth behind “Beowulf”! A troupe of Norse warriors, accompanied by an Arab chronicler (Antonio Banderas who apparently can’t pass as a Dane), contend with a horde of cannibal troglodytes. In a meticulous observance of historical detail, none of the troglodytes are wearing Nascar decals. The battle scenes are good but the film has the subtlety of Cliffs Notes. For instance, the troglodytes are called the Wendols; gee, doesn’t that sound like Grendel! All these comparisons will be pounded into your head–so now you won’t have to read “Beowulf”.

The Long Ships has Richard Widmark as a brave but luckless Viking hoping to repay his debts by finding/stealing a fabulous treasure: the world’s largest solid gold bell. Apparently, everyone else has lost track of the bell, so it is just awaiting Widmark to collect it. However, the sight of a Viking fleet off North Africa does get the attention of the local Emir, played by a humorless Sidney Poitier who obviously is furious at his agent. The Saracens will vie and fight with the Vikings over who gets the treasure. And you will marvel at your stamina, watching the film while muttering “this is so stupid.”

“Eric the Viking” is actually a theological comedy, the saga of the title character’s visit to Valhalla. Written and directed by Terry Jones, this “Grim Pillage Progress” really is only one-fifth as good as Monty Python.  However, there is a very interesting explanation of the Norse Gods: they are vicious children.    That could be the most rational explanation of most theology.

And finally, there is that epic of miscasting “The Vikings” with Issur Demsky and Bernard Schwartz leading the Norsemen. Landing on the lower east side of Old York, in their dragonhead pushcarts….Actually, that would have been more believable. Perhaps Issur could pass for a Kirk Douglas or even a Viking; but Bernard? If there is ever a Tony Curtis Museum of Elocution, the shrine must include his invocation of “Toar” and “Oodun”.

If anyone here has seen a good Viking film, I await your review.

Yugin of the Arched Eyebrow