FinermanWorks

The Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz may have been an failure at trying to restore and reform his disintegrating empire; however, he successfully introduced one western idea that has proved a very popular alternative to competence: public relations. He courted publicity. Too many of his forebears rarely could find their way out of the harem; they certainly were not available for public functions or media events. But Abdulaziz led the life of a celebrity. Whenever one of his botched reforms was undertaken, he was there for the ribbon-cutting. He was the first Turkish leader to tour Western Europe, mingling with other royals and presenting the world with its first friendly image of the Ottoman Empire. And he was as gracious a host as he was a guest. When both the Prince of Wales and the Empress of France were on their way to attend the Grand Opening of the Suez Canal, they first enjoyed a lavish reception from their friend in Constantinople.

So what accounts for the Sultan’s unprecedented theatrical instincts? Well, he had ten children–so that rules out one possibility. But I have even better gossip: he was a quarter French, courtesy of a grandmother. Her name was Aimee du Buc de Rivery. With that du and de, she was indeed an aristocrat and the heiress of an estate in Martinique. She was aboard a ship seized by pirates, and she ended up in the slave markets of North Africa. A pretty teenaged European would have been a very esteemed possession, and she was acquired for the Sultan’s harem. The Sultan evidently noticed her because she became the mother of his successor; and Abdulaziz was her grandson.

However, the family connection extends a little further. Aimee du Buc de Rivery had a cousin and childhood friend with an equal number of de’s and du’s in her name; but for short she was called Josephine. Yes, that Josephine. She is best known for her second marriage, but her first marriage at least produced children. Her daughter Hortense married the younger brother of Napoleon (awkward but not really incestuous) and they produced the charming if incompetent Louis Napoleon, France’s second emperor. So the equally hapless Abdulaziz and Louis Napoleon were not only cousins, you can see the family resemblance.

JOHN McCAIN ATTEMPTS TO PLACATE RITE WRING CRITICS

Speaking before the Conservative Political Action Conference, Senator John McCain apologized for having a left hand and left foot. “I try not to use them.” Facing a hostile audience and flung silverware, the Senator sought to establish his pedigree as a Conservative.

“I never touch any money that pictures a Democrat or a Liberal. I can get by just fine with Washingtons and Hamiltons. You know, when I was captured by North Vietnamese, I kept thinking that I would rather be waterboarded than read the New York Times. During those long years of imprisonment, I’ll tell you what kept me sane and alive. First, just remembering the wonderful movies of Ronald Reagan. What true American wouldn’t want to see Cattle Queen of Montana at least seven times. Then, there was the thought of Midge Decter naked; of course, I always fantasized that we were married first. Finally, I was sustained by the certain knowledge that somewhere in the sky above me, Jesus was beating up Buddha, Allah and Karl Marx.

Now, I stand before you, promising to continue everything that you loved about the last seven years. If you want Dick Cheney to be my vice president too, that’s fine. Moreover, I promise to put Anne Coulter on the Supreme Court–although we should give her maternity leave if she has Antonin Scalia’s baby. Tell me what country you want me to invade, and I’d do it. I want to be your candidate, and I am willing to lose the election just to prove it.”

PAUL GIAMATTI TO PLAY PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS

The seven-episode mini-series is being made for US cable network HBO and is based on David McCullough’s best-selling book John Adams. Giamatti will play Adams before he became the US president and was a Massachusetts lawyer working behind the scenes to mobilize a revolt of the colonies, which led to the American Revolution. The book was also partly based on letters between Adams and wife Abigail, which will also be included in the mini-series. The projectwill be broadcast in March 2008

Since it is HBO, we can look forward to nude scenes of Abigail Adams (likely with Ben Franklin…if anyone really tried to be the Father of Our Country).

Paul Giamatti is an inspired choice. John Adams was a small, physically unappealing and very annoying man. Imagine Woody Allen as a monogamous Gentile. Paul Giamatti would be perfect in conveying such an irritating, clumsy personality.

If John Hancock hadn’t picked up everyone’s bar tab in Philadelphia, it is likely that the other states might have voted their independence from Massachusetts, too.

And Adams was just as popular as our ambassador to France, nagging Versailles about Paris’ high prices and low necklines. The guillotine had yet to be invented, so the French government settled for expelling Adams to the Netherlands.

Medieval plumbing is an oxymoron but–if you can believe the Chicago Tribulation–“the” fashionable toilet is named for a seventh century Frankish king.

You’d think that the Byzantine Emperors or the Caliphs might have had more impressive thrones, but King Dagobert I apparently set the standard for royal assizes.

Although Dagobert would seem like the name of a bad pizzeria, the king was actually one of the formidable French rulers of the Dark Ages. He was almost an only child, so he only had one sibling to eliminate to gain complete control of France. Dagobert would never have imagined himself the namesake of a toilet; in his lifetime, the ultimate accolade for a Frankish warlord would be getting a bolt of silk from Constantinople. From the Frankish perspective, it was pure status; from the Byzantine perspective, it was the equivalent of a Christmas card for the help.

Perhaps the toilet was a more sincere tribute.

Out of mischief or masochism, I wondered what the Catholic Encyclopedia had to say about Tomas de Torquemada. Would modern Catholic scholarship admit that Spain’s Grand Pyromaniac was a monster, claim to never have heard of him, or equivocate over the meaning and context of mass-murder? Take a wild guess!

The Catholica Encyclopedia concedes that Torquemada was somewhat controversial and, perhaps from a modern perspective, a tad cruel. However, the Encyclopedia quibbles over the number of his victims: it couldn’t be 20,000, probably not even 6,000, say 2,000 tops. Who would think that Catholic scholars would act like Jewish wholesalers? In fact, that was exactly what Torqumada feared. According to the Encyclopedia. he was trying to protect Spain from being “Judaized”.

Apparently, he burned the most infectious 2,000, 6,000 or 20,000 people and saved Spain from that dreadful fate. But what if he had failed? Just imagine a Judaized Spain.

In 1492, Columbus was commissioned by their Most Sephardic Majesties Ferdinand and Bella to sail west to China, where he was to pick up two orders each of chicken cashew, mongolian beef, and hot & sour soup. Naturally, he was to bring back the receipt.

During the 16th century, the countries we now know as Ladino America are overrun by armies of peddlers. The Aztecs are persuaded to buy Popeil cutlery for their human sacrifices. In Cubala and the Rabbinican Republic, the most promising athletes are enslaved by sports agents.

Of course, Spanish art is equally transformed. El Greco’s Transfigurations now depict a 13 year-old becoming a man. The princesses painted by Velasquez will seem much more annoying. And no one will ever call himself Goya.

Literature will also reflect this Judaizing. Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon will convey the pageantry, drama and danger of an all-you-can-eat brunch. Of course, the masterpiece of Spanish literature is Cervantes’ “Sancho Panza” the comic epic of a rotund schlep who hangs around a demented gentile for excitement.

Oh, and the Spanish Civil War was a lawsuit.

U.S. SPY SATELLITE, POWER GONE, MAY HIT EARTH

Hillary Clinton today warned that Barak Obama’s charisma might draw satellites, asteroids and extra-terrestrials to earth. “All that charm could destroy this planet. Unlike my kindly, naive opponent I know how to deal with extra-terrestrials, the benefit of spending 35 years in government and the fact that I am a Borg.” Sen. Obama refuted her criticism by announcing his endorsement by the Vulcans.

Former Governor and Habitual Evangelist Mike Huckabee blamed the satellite’s failure on modern society’s liberal tolerance of gravity. “Before we knew about gravity, we didn’t have these problems. All we now can do is pray that Jesus flies that satellite away.”

Senator John McCain expressed his hope that the satellite wouldn’t hit any friendly countries. He further wondered if the satellite failed because Mitt Romney had outsourced the aero-space industry to China. Mr. Romney denied any “effective” connection to the Shanghai-headquartered Romney Metalworks, Waste Disposal, Pharmaceuticals and Catering . “I may have ten million shares, but I still get the same annual report you do.”

The Chicago Tribune has endorsed Barak Obama in Illinois’ Democratic primary. I can imagine the first draft of that editorial….

The Chicago Tribune is not in the habit of hugging lepers. However, if we must choose between a leper with six fingers and half a nose or a pariah in complete decay, we prefer Barak Obama.

Of course, we really would not want Democrats to read the Tribune; and if we didn’t need the money, we snatch this newspaper from their grubby hands. We console ourselves with the thought that they might get papercuts. And if a vulgar, subversive Democrat should be reading this editorial, we would like to tell you the least harmful way to vote.

We endorse Mr. Obama. He is indeed the candidate of hope. For instance, he dresses better than we ever could have hoped. (Clarence Thomas is another sartorial exception but he wears Antonin Scalia’s hand-me-downs.) More importantly, a man of hope usually doesn’t have a prayer. We like that in Democrats. It is that old McGovern charm…and we never tire of it.

However, this is the real reason for our endorsement: Mr. Obama is not Hillary Clinton. She is a ruthless, amoral, megalomanical sociopath; she would do and say anything to win the election. It is obvious that she was raised Republican and we will never forgive her for defecting.

This morning Chris Matthews was lending his unique perspective–and grating falsetto–to popular theater and films. “You see the election is just like Amadeus. Hillary is Salieri, and Barak is Mozart.” Unfortunately, he did not elaborate as to whether or not George Bush was Emperor Joseph and Dick Cheney was Maria Theresa.

With some back issues of the New Yorker, however, Chris can imagine a complete repertory season….

“Barak is Othello, and Hillary is Desdemona but she is married to Iago who is using her to get another term as Doge.”

“John McCain is the free-spirit, iconoclast, anti-establish hippie of Hair. At least, that’s the impression of the Republican Party and the liberal media.”

“Mitt Romney is like Eliza Doolittle except that the high-born lady is trying to pass herself off as a flowergirl.”

“Mike Huckabee is an Arthur Miller character. With just a smile and shoeshine, he is Willy Loman in The Crucible, selling guided tours for witch hunts.”

“Relying on his animal magnetism Rudy Giuliani thinks that he’s Stanley Kowalski and the voters are Blanche DuBois; however, Blanche beats him up.”

HEAD OF GREECE’S ORTHODOX CHURCH DIES

Associated Press Jan 28th, 2008

ATHENS, Greece — Hundreds of mourners, many sobbing, gathered Monday at Athens’ cathedral to file past the remains of Archbishop Christodoulos, the first leader of Greece’s powerful Orthodox Church to welcome a Catholic pope to Athens in 1,300 years.

Never portraying a gay cowboy or the wife of Bob Newhart, Christodoulos obviously was an underachiever. So the Associated Press was desperate to find something stellar about him. “Being the first leader of Greece’s powerful Orthodox Church to welcome a Catholic pope to Athens in 1,300 years” does sound significant…except. Let’s rephrase it in a contemporary context: He welcomed the assistant postmaster of Buffalo, New York to Camden, New Jersey. Unfortunately, 1300 years ago the Pope was a middling bureaucrat and Athens was a ruin.

At the time, the Pope’s name was Constantine. So visiting Greece was not exactly a novelty for him. In fact, he was just one of a long line of Greeks who served as Pope in the seventh and eighth centuries. Why was there this Hellenic monopoly? The Greeks still retained literacy during the Dark Ages, unlike Western Europeans at the time, and they were more committed to celibacy than the Italians. However, there really was a political basis for all those Greek popes. The Pope then was appointed by the Byzantine Emperor, and guess which nationality the world’s most powerful Greek preferred. If and when the Pope ever sought to be independent of Constantinople, the Byzantine garrison in Rome tended to keep the Pope modest. Indeed, the Popes were at the Emperor’s beck and call; the slower or less sycophantic Pontiffs arrived in Constantinople in chains. And the Papacy was not even an impressive sinecure. Rome was a threadbare and dangerous outpost in the Byzantine Empire. If Pope Constantine had any influential friends at court, he probably would have preferred being Archbishop of Thessalonika.

As for Athens in the 8th century, the once glorious inspiration of civiilzation now was its own mausoleum. The city was a depopulated ruin. Athens had been ravaged by the barbarian invasions and was still threatened by them. What the barbarians had not destroyed, the Christians suppressed. The Parthenon was now a Church. Other conversions could not be easily accommodated. Even after Christianity had become the official religion of Rome and Constantinople, the philosophy schools of Athens continued to teach a classical education, which the Church regarded as implicitly pagan. In 529, the Emperor Justinian ordered the closing of Athens’ schools, ending a 1000 year-old-heritage. (Aspiring scholars would be obliged to get the Christian curriculum at the University of Constantinople.) Without its schools–and the scholars and business they attracted–Athens descended into desolation.

So a Papal visit to 8th century Athens would have been no thrill for the Pope or honor for the city. It was just a bureaucrat passing by a wreck. At least when Pope John Paul II visited Archbishop Christodoulos, both the Papacy and Athens looked a little more prestigious.

With just hours before the Florida Republican Primary vote, and the polls indicating a dead heat, Mitt Romney and John McCain have abandoned all civilized restraints and committed the ultimate offense: Each has accused the other of being a Liberal.

“You’re a Liberal.” “No, you’re a Liberal.” “You’d hire a million illegal aliens.” “Well, you’d hire a gazillion.”

I am waiting to see which one is first accused of being a boogerhead. Apparently, none of the striking scriptwriters are Republicans; otherwise we might get a better quality of accusation.

“You’re so Liberal you’d have voted for Lincoln.”
“You’re so Liberal you’d have married him.”
“You’re so Liberal you’d have killed Jesus.
“You’re so Liberal you’d force the Virgin Mary get an abortion.
“You’re so Liberal you want to lose the Iraq War.”
“Youre so Liberal you’d want to win the Second World War.”