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ROMNEY SPEAKS UP FOR SONS’ DECISION

“BETTENDORF, Iowa – Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday defended his five sons’ decision not to enlist in the military, saying they’re showing their support for the country by “helping me get elected.”

160,000 troops in Iraq are now requesting immediate transfer to Iowa, so that they can “support their country”, too.

“Romney did not serve in Vietnam due to his Mormon missionary work.”

Romney did his missionary work in France, where he bravely contended with millions of caustic chain smokers. (Actually, the Viet Cong probably would have been friendlier.)

Julius Valerius Majorian was the last capable Roman emperor, at a time when it no longer mattered. By 457, Rome had already been sacked twice, and the Vandals had left nothing to steal (unless you work for the Getty Museum–and don’t mind some scuffed statues). The western half of the Empire was disintegrating; the patrician classes of Iberia and Gallia were now paying homage to whichever Germanic chieftain was in the neighborhood. If the Empire was not completely defenseless, it was hostage to the dubious loyalty of its army. The Roman army was no longer Roman; the Empire was reduced to hiring barbarians to fight barbarians. Even the generals were now barbarians, and one of them was the de facto ruler of the Remnant Empire. His name was Ricimer. It never occurred to him to seize the throne–he was a barbarian with etiquette–but he was content to select malleable Patricians to reign for him. From 456 to 472, Ricimer picked, deposed and replaced five Emperors.

In most cases, Ricimer had a discerning judgment in hapless mediocrities. Ironically, his first puppet proved to be anything but. Majorian was a conscientious administrator and an excellent general in his own right. Ricimer might have forgiven or ignored Majorian’s domestic reforms and but not an independent foreign policy or military initiatives. It was one thing for Majorian to defeat the Visigoths; Ricimer did not like them. However, Majorian now threatened the Vandals, and they had a good working relationship with Ricimer. Majorian’s expedition against the Vandals was sabotaged; for some reason, the Roman fleet was left unguarded and the Vandals somehow had been informed of that. Then, someone stirred up the troops to mutiny; and Majorian four-year reign ended brutally on this day in 461.

Majorian at least earned the highest regard of Edward Gibbon. The great curmudgeon generally disapproved of everyone, but he respected Majorian: “the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species.”

Ricimer died of natural causes in 472. None of Ricimer’s puppet emperors did.

“POLICE REPORT: Rhames’ Dogs May Not Have Caused Death

A caretaker who was found dead Friday on Ving Rhames’ Brentwood property after being mauled by the actor’s dogs may not have died from the wounds he suffered in the attack, Los Angeles authorities say. The 40-year-old man, whose name has not yet been released, was covered in dog bites, according to police, but it could have been a heart attack or other medical condition that actually killed him. “

CSI BRENTWOOD:

Police investigators reopened the case of a Mr. Louis Bourbon, Jr, Jr. Jr. Jr. A preliminary report indicated that the deceased had deceased as the result of a guillotine. Upon further investigation, however, police now speculate that Mr. Bourbon may have died of a heart attack. “He was unusually heavy for a 38 year-old, and he seemed to be in a very stressful situation.”

In another revised autopsy, Brentwood police now believed that Leon Trotsky died of a delayed case of Tay-Sachs Disease.

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire has just announced that it will be holding auditions in metropolitan Chicago. History and I are about to repeat ourselves. Here is my account of last year’s farce….

Who wants to be tortured and humiliated? I evidently do. Although I did not book my summer vacation at Abu Ghraib, I was among the 2500 victims who auditioned for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

America’s second favorite quiz show was touring the Midwest, looking for contestants. The brilliant and the greedy of metropolitan Chicago were invited to audition at Medieval Times in Schaumburg, August 15, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Come one, come all. So we did.

Speaking of medieval times, I have been vying to be on Millionaire since the days of Regis. To be honest, I was a prisoner of expectations. I have some faded renown as a former champion on Jeopardy, so everyone told me “You ought to be on Millionaire.” And I agreed!

At one time, you could audition for the show by telephone. Confronted with such questions as “Arrange these Secretaries of Labor in chronological order”, you would type your response on the phone key pad. I cannot tell you how many times I passed those tests. I can tell how many times I was invited on the show: less than once. To my further aggravation, I knew a number of people who were contestants; and guess whom they asked to be their phone-a-friend? Vicarious glory is better than none at all, but I wanted to be more than just a disembodied voice on Millionaire.

Since Meredith began hosting the syndicated version, Millionaire’s auditions are usually held in New York, an inconvenient location for a Midwestern boy. However, the news of the Schaumburg auditions seemed like a personal invitation. Being a free-lance writer, answerable only to God and the IRS, I had the time to waste. Even my practical wife thought I should go. I had to try.

Although the auditions were scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., I was determined to arrive early. I could imagine how crowded it would be. In fact, my imagination was an underachiever. I arrived at 7:45 a.m. and was already too late: the parking lot at Medieval Times was full. The summer interns of WGN founding themselves improvising traffic control, forming barriers and telling the dismayed and indignant drivers that the nearest available parking was a mile away. There also was a police car to discourage any rioting. So my car and I joined the caravan in the quest for parking.

The parking lot, although depressingly distant, was quite easy to find. You could see a procession of aspiring contestants trudging from there toward Medieval Times. In fact, it did seem like a medieval pilgrimage. There were young and old, quite a few who had difficulty making the unexpected hike; and we were all hoping for a miracle: the chance to be on Millionaire. The show has less than 500 contestants a year; but from this region alone 2500 people were auditioning. Millionaire was also holding try-outs in Pittsburgh and Seattle; of course, there are regular auditions in New York. What are the odds of being chosen? Each and every one of us was praying for a statistical miracle.

After a fairly vigorous hike  (Schaumburg does not believe in sidewalks) I arrived at the audition. I should be grateful for that exercise because I now would be standing in line for the next five hours. At 8:30 a.m., that line extended the length of two city blocks. An hour later, it was twice that long. You might wonder how to kill five hours in a line. Some people had the foresight to bring paperbacks; you could see a few determined contestants intent on memorizing almanacs. Others were on their cellphones; catching up on everyone they knew. I just started talking with my neighbors. I soon knew the names of their children and pets; and they might have learned some tactless details about my in-laws. We soon were a band of brothers and vowed to be each other’s phone-a-friend.

Over the hours, we slowly approached the building where the auditions were held. A little past noon, we finally entered the “castle”..We were still standing in line but at least we now were out of the August sun. After another hour, the show’s staff handed out forms and questionnaires to complete. The form was intended to reassure the producers and their lawyers that I had no relatives or suspicious connections on the show or with any of the show’s sponsors. (You apparently are not allowed friends in advertising.) I was also required to divulge that I had been on Jeopardy: no one wants a game show hustler. In addition to a statistical miracle, I now was praying for a statute of limitations.

In contrast to the rigid legalese of the form, the questionnaire was cloyingly whimsical. It sought endearing personalities among the applicants by asking “What would you do if you won a million dollars?” and “What was the most embarrassing moment of your life?”   For the million dollar query, I replied “I would ask my wife how we were spending it. As long as I have cable television and a freezer full of ice cream, I wouldn’t have any further questions.” As for the most embarrassing moment of my life, I answered, “I have yet to be convicted of a crime, so I haven’t had that moment. So far my life has been only a series of minor martyrdoms.” The questionnaire also asked “Tell us something about yourself that no one else knows.” Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have any fetishes or undiagnosed psychoses, and I really wasn’t prepared to fabricate any. The contestant coordinators had to be satisfied with my sincere sarcasm.

Finally, we were assigned our battalions–at least 150 contestants per group– and led into the auditorium where Medieval Times normally holds its banquets, jousts and possible reenactments of the bubonic plague. For the first time in six hours, we had the luxury of sitting. Each of us received an ID number, a pencil, an answer sheet and a sealed test. We were informed that the test consisted of 30 answers, multiple-choice, and we had ten minutes to complete it. Starting now: Britney Spears; white blood cells; Bernie Mac; Jane Austen. Time’s up.

Then we had to wait to for the results. Talking among ourselves, we did our scoring and evaluations. “Was that Mae West?” “Oh, it’s the retina.” “Are you sure it was Paris?” If there were any doubts, one fellow would use his Blackberry to ascertain the correct answer. Yes, it definitely was “Casablanca”.  Finally, a staff member read aloud the ID numbers. Yes, I had passed; would I have written this if I hadn’t?  Of my “band of brothers”  only the Chicago fireman joined me as a survivor. Of the entire battalion, some two dozen passed the test. We were told to go across the building for our interviews with the contestant coordinators.

And once again we were standing and waiting. Add another 30 minutes to the Purgatory. Three staff members of Millionaire interrogated hundreds of us to determine who–if any–would end up sitting next to Meredith. All of that interviewing must be draining. My interrogator could not bother to mask his boredom and indifference. He was seated, and next to him was a pitcher of cola and a box of cookies. But what was my fatigue and hunger compared to his ennui. He did not bother to look at my questionnaire. The interview was basically “Hello, what do you do for a living, good luck and goodbye.” His callousness was dismaying. Was I lucky that he refrained from physical abuse? Actually, if he had flung the cola in my face, I could have used the nourishment.

I staggered out of the building and began the mile-long trek to my car. That humiliating dismissal probably was the appropriate end to a draining, miserable experience. This was the type of day that inspires a satirist as soon as I recuperate. And I now have an understanding of the great mystery of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Why do its contestants always seem so dippy and spent? I realize that they once were bright and vibrant; but the auditions have left them blithering, exhausted wrecks.

Today is the 2,225th anniversary of the battle of Cannae. I could describe Hannibal’s greatest victory over the Romans–or you could just wait to see the Vin Diesel movie. It is tentatively (and ever so subtly) titled “Hannibal the Conqueror.” With Mr. Diesel in the title role, Hannibal will be carrying the elephants across the Alps.

Cannae was indeed the worst military defeat of the Romans. The Roman army was twice the size of the Carthaginian army and had twice as many commanders. Rome had two consuls and each commanded the army on alternate days. Half the time, it was led by the prudent Paullius; half the time, it was under the reckless Varro. Guess who was in command on August 2, 216 B.C.?

With his numerical superiority, Varro felt he could afford to fight on terrain of Hannibal’s choicing. Indeed, with so many men to spare, Varro could not bother with troop deployment. The legions were just piled into an Italian lump whose sheer mass would presumably roll over the Carthagians. However, with that sheer mass; the legions actually were immobilized by each other. The Romans units could do nothing but wait their turn to be slaughtered by the Carthaginian cavalry.

At the start of that day, the Roman army was twice the size of the Carthaginian. By the end of the day, it was half of the size. But Varro survived the battle, although Paullius did not.

The loss of 60,000 men in a single day would be significant by even the carefree standards of World War I. Could you imagine how the Media Department of the Roman Senate had to transmute the news….

“Light Trafffic on the Appian Way”

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.