EYE OF THE BEHOLDER -- FIGURE AND GROUND
By Ray H. Greenblatt

Read at the Joint Meeting of
The Chicago Literary Club
and
The Fortnightly of Chicago
At The Fortnightly on March 1, 2002

© 2002 Ray H. Greenblatt

Eye of the beholder. Figure and ground.

A number of years ago a clever wag contrived a wicked definition. A conservative, he said, is a liberal who has been mugged. A number of years later, an equally clever wag contrived an equally wicked definition. A liberal, he said, is a conservative who has been indicted.

Uncle Joe Cannon, the Illinois Congressman who served as Speaker of the House from 1903 to 1911, presided one day over a tumultuous session in which House members argued heatedly over an objection to the seating of a Mormon who had been elected to represent a district in Utah. The ground cited for denying him the seat was that Mormons in Utah practiced polygamy. Pointing out that the gentleman elected by the district's voters had but one wife, Uncle Joe said: "I'd rather have one polygamist who doesn't polyg than all you monogamists who don't monog."

If political putdowns are your fancy, you will admire the handiwork of Stephan Young, a U.S. Senator from Ohio during the 1960's, in replying to an abusive letter from a constituent: "I think you ought to know," Senator Young wrote, "that somebody has been sending crank letters out over your signature."

The eye of the beholder must surely have winked at the wit of Winston Churchill. Consider the legendary exchange between George Bernard Shaw and Churchill over theater tickets. In a note to Churchill Shaw wrote: "Enclosed are two tickets for opening night of my new play. Bring a friend -- if you have one." Returning the tickets with a note regretting that he had a conflicting engagement, Churchill added: "Please send me two tickets for the second night -- if there is one."

One day many years later, Churchill -- by then the Prime Minister -- was seated on the front bench in the House of Commons listening to a newly-elected member deliver his maiden speech. To the new member's consternation, Churchill repeatedly shook his head in disagreement. Finally, the new member could bear it no longer. "I would like to remind the Honorable Prime Minister," he pleaded, "that I am only stating my own opinion." "And I would like to remind the Honorable Member," Churchill replied, "that I am only shaking my own head."

There are, of course, countless other examples of Churchill's quick reflexes and tart tongue. During the Second World War, Churchill had occasion to meet frequently with Charles DeGaulle, then the leader of the Free French. Churchill loathed these encounters. DeGaulle's imperiousness and posturing exasperated him. Once, at a mid-meeting break, Churchill burst from the room shouting: "Interpreter! Interpreter! How do you say the opposite of Vive Le France?"

Perhaps the closest this country came in the 20th Century to fielding a match for Churchill in the art of elegant invective was John L. Lewis, the deep-voiced, bushy-browed, Shakespeare-quoting President of The United Mine Workers Union. Of William Green, then President of the American Federation of Labor, Lewis said: "I have probed Green's mind to the very depths and there is nothing there." Of Philip Murray, the hirsute President of the CIO, Lewis said: "Murray has no head. His neck just haired over."

In the 19th Century, however, the United States did field a practitioner of invective who may have been Churchill's equal. He was Rufus Choate: preeminent Boston lawyer, founder of the Massachusetts Whig Party and U.S. Senator. Like other thoughtful Americans, Choate despised the xenophobic political party known as the Know-Nothings. Perhaps the most colorful of Choate's legendary prose is the following imprecation blasting the Know-Nothings:
Any thing more low, obscene, feculent, the manifold heavings of history have not cast up. We shall come to the worship of onions, cats and things vermiculite.
By the way, in 1854 Chicago elected a Know-Nothing Mayor, Dr. Levi D. Boone. With the foreign-born constituting almost 50% of the City's population, he was not a prudent choice. And to call Boone thickheaded would be consummate understatement. His first act as mayor was to sign an executive order decreeing that all Chicago policemen had to be native-born Americans, thereby not only insulting the City's Irish but also decimating its police force. He turned next to the Germans. They made up about 25% of the City's population and were so dominant on the North Side that it was usually called Nord Seite. The issue Boone chose for tormenting the Germans was--what else?--beer. He imposed a liquor-license fee designed to force most of the small, beer-serving saloons on the North Side to close while leaving in business the larger liquor-and-wine-serving saloons. He also initiated a Sunday saloon-closing ordinance applicable only to beer-serving saloons.

The Germans were outraged. They rioted. The riots escalated. The mob surged. The police drove the rioters back. A policeman had an arm shot off. A rioter died. Wounded politically, the Mayor soon lost his zeal for closing German saloons and preventing beer from being drunk. But the City had had enough. After Boone's term ended in 1856, the Know-Nothings never again figured significantly in Chicago politics.

The eye of the beholder often plays a critical role in the legal reasoning relied on by judges to support their judicial decisions. Last fall, while attending a class reunion, I audited Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe's Advanced Constitutional Law class. Tribe -- who led the Democratic Party's constitutional-law team in the Bush-Gore Florida-vote-count fray - - was explaining to his class how common it is for judges of all stripes to reach the result they are predisposed to reach in a particular case by defining the issue broadly or narrowly as it suits them for that purpose. He gave examples of liberal and conservative judges alike who have defined an issue broadly in one case to reach a desired result and defined a similar issue narrowly in a second case to reach a different desired result. "Thus, in much litigation," Tribe concluded, "the result turns on the judge's judicial lens."

"Of course," Tribe went on acidly, "some judges think their lenses were ground by the founding fathers."

Turning now from judges' decisions to a simple case of hapless miscommunication, we come upon a story that has for generations circulated around Harvard Yard. A Harvard classics professor out for a walk on a glorious Sunday morning in Cambridge came upon some townsmen fishing off Harvard Bridge, their lines dangling in the Charles River below. In consummate high spirits, the classicist hailed the men in Latin. "Io Pescatori!" he shouted, meaning of course "Hail Fishermen." The townsmen were not classicists. No bonehead from Harvard was going to call any of them "pisscatores" and get away with it. They threw him in the river.

A more famous story--perhaps also apocryphal--concerns Louis XIV of France. Informed that his army had lost a crucial battle, the French King is said to have replied: "What? Has God forgotten all that I have done for him?" Was the Sun King an accidental comedian whom today's feminists would dismiss as an egocentric male without a clue or was he an urbane sophisticate with a delicious penchant for ironic wit? I think the latter, but then, I myself may be a solipsistic clueless male.

The majority of Israel's Jewish citizens are secular Jews. They are not religiously observant. Yet, under Israeli law it is Orthodox rabbis who are the final arbiters of whether one is or is not Jewish. The irony is not lost on the citizenry. "I never attend synagogue," one Israeli woman reportedly observed, "but the synagogue I never attend is always an Orthodox synagogue."

Also famous for their keen sense of irony are the members of the urbane Jewish community of the Crimean port city of Odessa on the Black Sea. One joke that circulated in Odessa during the Soviet Era was the following: "Hello KGB? Rabinowitch here. Have you found my parrot yet? Well, when you do, I just want you to know that I don't agree with anything he says."

Chicago's Weiss Memorial Hospital was the venue for another flight of whimsy, this one a true story. At 2:00 a.m. one Sunday morning in the 1960's, a young resident in the emergency room telephoned upstairs to the bedroom occupied by Dr. Richard Bigg, the staff doctor on hospital supervisory duty that weekend, awakening Dr. Bigg to report that a patient had been brought in who had been pierced by an arrow still lodged in his body. What should they do, the resident inquired. "Circle the wagons," Dr. Bigg replied.

What makes one laugh at stories like these? Surprise perhaps. The story takes a sudden turn entirely cattywampous to the hearer's mindset and that causes even a black necktie to wiggle.

Another flirtation with mindset is the classic tale of the teenager who proudly reports to his father at dinner that he saved a dollar that morning by walking to school and not taking the bus. "Why didn't you save $5," the father asks, "and not take a taxi."

My favorite such story is set in a shtetl somewhere in 19th Century Eastern Europe. There, a pedlar rises at dawn every morning, harnesses his ancient nag to a decrepit wagon and sets about his rounds peddling milk. One morning the pedlar discovers to his dismay that the old horse has finally gone to its reward. After grieving copiously for the faithful beast, the pedlar goes to his rabbi for advice. "Rabbi," he says, "my horse has died and I'm unable to peddle milk. I have a wife and eight children to support. What should I do?"

"You must get another horse," the rabbi responds.

"I'm a poor man," says the pedlar, "I can't afford to buy a horse."

"Come with me," replies the rabbi. "There are rich Jews in the next town who own horses. Perhaps one of them could help."

Together they walk to the next town. There they enter the large stable of one of the rich Jews. "Would any of these horses do?" the rabbi asks. "They are all wonderful horses," the pedlar answers, wide-eyed. "Any of them would do."

"Which one would you most like?" the rabbi asks. "That one," the pedlar answers, pointing to the largest and most handsome.

"Take him," the rabbi says.

"I can't take the rich man's horse. I would be sent to prison. I might be hanged."

But the rabbi stands firm: "Hand me the horse's blanket. Lead him out of the stable. Take him home."

With trepidation, the pedlar acquiesces. He leads the horse away. The rabbi lies down in the horse's stall, covers himself with the blanket and goes to sleep.

The next morning the rich man, making his customary rounds to view his horses, arrives at the stall where the rabbi sleeps. "What's this?" he demands. "Where is my horse? Who are you?"

Waking, the rabbi rubs his eyes and climbs to his feet. "I am a rabbi,"he answers. "I . . . eh . . . I was unfaithful to my wife. God punished me. He turned me into a horse. I guess my punishment is now over."

The rich man looks perplexed. He scratches his head. "Strange," he says finally, "but alright, I suppose you can go."

The rabbi folds the blanket, places it neatly on the floor of the stall and strides out.

The next morning the pedlar plies his route with his magnificent new horse harnessed to the decrepit wagon. Suddenly, to his horror, he notices the rich man standing close by staring intently at the horse. The pedlar's heart begins to pound. He watches in dread as the rich man approaches the horse, puts his arm around its shoulder, and says: "So, Rabbi! You've been fooling around again!"

Eye of the Beholder: Ocular receptor for the jocular. Figure and Ground: Fertile soil for laughter and merriment.

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