Chapter 3: "Wordwise Not All Pictures Are Created Equally Informative"107
Among other matters, including a frank response to the allegations concerning his "probable paternity" of the "nonfiction" character he is seeking to deify, the author demonstrates in less than 1,000 words his memory of what transpired between President Kennedy and Jack F. Klutz in Moronville on 22 June 1963 is worth more than the photographic "evidence" offered to prove JFK's Rose Garden shaking of Bill Clinton's hand established his—Clinton's—claim to neoNewFrontier fame.
FOR STARTERS, WE CAN DISPOSE of that conventional wisdom107a about "a picture being worth a 1,000 words" by simply stating this obvious fact: There are countless photographs showing JFK shaking all kinds of hands. Most of which belong to more or less perfect nonentities who remained just as anonymous after their 15 minutes of Rose Garden, Oval Office and/or Main Street fame as they were before them. Moreover, paraphrasing another107b of the Morons' homilies: It takes more than a Presidential handshake to turn an Arkansas107c wunderkind into a worldclass Massiah.107d But turning our attention to more important matters: That "certain Moroness" I mentioned in the previous chapter was, as you've probably surmised, none other than Maria Bimbeaux-Klutz; wife of Josef Klutz,107e a muchdecorated and -wounded ("but still in full possession of my family jewels") soldier of fortune who, at that time, had fought (on the losing side) in every military campaign since 1936—when Haile Selassie hired a brigade of Moronic mercenaries to defend Abyssinia against Mussolini's revenge for the humiliating defeat suffered by the Italians (who had also recruited some Morons to do their frontline fighting for them) at Andowa 40 years before. And it should also come as no surprise the infant she struggled so valiantly to hold aloft for a Kennedy kiss was, of course, the future107f Jack F. Klutz.
While for her sake I'm reluctant to discuss the intimate details of my pre(and to some extent post)marital relationship with Maria Bimbeaux, since the paternity of her only son is an issue which is bound to arise107g—and because it couldn't be more crucial to the genetic foundation107h on which the rationale for Klutzian NeoEgalitarianism is based; I will do so with the frankness exhibited by such other (in)famous amatory memoirists as Giovanni Casanova, Jean Rousseau, the Marquis de Sade, Frank Harris, Colette, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Like those other crusaders (Wilhelm Reich, D. H. Lawrence, Frank Harris, Henry Miller, Alfred Kinsey, Masters & Johnson, etc.) for the cause of sexual emancipation I've never made any bones about what will one day be my chapter in the hand(if not the history-)books on the Art of (or at least the super protracted preliminaries to) Human Lovemaking. As one of my enraptured "conquests" expressed herself in a spontaneous outburst of Churchillianlike eloquence:108 "Never in the field of prolonged foreplay has so much been done by one Jewish American intellectual for so many lovelorn Moronettes."109
I got my first look of the ravishing Maria Bimbeaux on December 24th, 1941. There are several good reasons why I should—and most emphatically do!—recall that RedLetter date so vividly. Not the least of which was the invitation I would receive that night from Adolf Hitler to attend the Christmas party he was throwing in his Eagle's Nest atop the Obersalzburg. But to be perfectly candid—as always!—it was the stunning sight of that 16yearold beauty110 standing on the stage of Moronville's State Theatre wearing only a maidenly blush that etched itself onto what was then the still prudish111 (if not puritanical) state of my mind with the sulfuric acid of Faustian lust. Like all of the other candidates competing for the (cardboard) crown in that year's Turnip Tournament Queen competition, Maria was required to stand before an allmale judging panel (of which I was one) in "a completely au naturel state to prevent the kind of 'cosmetic deceptions' practiced by some less than generouslyendowed contestant in the Miss America and several other wellknown "Bathing Beauty Pageants."
But before we delve any deeper into this Turnip Tournament Queen judging matter—I should address the questions you must be asking yourself about this implausibly rosecolored picture I've painted of my life as the American ambassador to a country with which, by virtue of the Mutual Protection Pact112 between Germany and Moronia, the United States was technically in a state of war since 11 December 1941. To do that, we must leave Maria in her fullyfrontalized state for the page—or 2—it will take me to satisfy your curiosity on that point;.
7 MONTHS AFTER I ARRIVED there in 1939, Hitler Moronia into signing the aforementioned German/Moronic Mutual Protection Pact. By whose terms, as France had been only a month earlier, Moronia was divided into 2 zones; with the Nazis placing Moronville under their "protective custody" while they launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets.113 As for the other half of their country "the Morons were perfectly free to engage in the cultivation of turnips or any other activities supporting Germany's campaign against their common enemy, the USSR." Until 11 December 1941, when Hitler declared war on the United States, America's special relationship with Moronia remained more or less unaltered; as did my ambassadorial status. But since Moronia was—at least de jure—a member of the Berlin/ Rome Axis, I naturally (and by no means unhappily!) assumed that, along with our diplomatic personnel in Germany and Italy, I would be sent back to Washington for reassignment to some post worthier of my abilities. To my amazement,114 however, I was instructed by cable to remain where I was until "certain arrangements could be finalized with the German authorities" regarding my future status in Moronia. Did this notso enigmatic message mean my enemies in the State Department were plotting with the Nazis to dispose of me permanently with a oneway ticket to some concentration camp? If so there seemed to be precious little I could do about it! The streets of Moronville were already crawling with SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht troops.115 Nevertheless I was understandably torn between my Foreign Service oath to "Obey unquestioningly all State Department orders"116 and the survival instincts selectively bred into my Hebrew ancestors who had outwitted (or -ran) all those Jewhaters bent on pogromizing every last "Christcrucifying kike" into extinction since the Diaspora left them stranded in that vast killing ground known as Central Europe.
After wrestling with this dilemma for what seemed like another of those "eternities" I finally decided to trust my fellow Americans; believing that no matter how antiSemitic my State Department persecutors might be they would stop short of delivering me into the genocidal hands of those Aryan Supermen who were now our common enemies. While this did indeed turn out to be the case, what I had no way of knowing at the time was: That even then my fate was securely cradled in those Celestial Hands which eventually maneuveredmaneuveredm me into writing this most biblical of modern bestsellers. In any event I didn't have long to wait before the other shoe, or, as it turned out—jackboot—dropped! The morning after receiving my "stay put" instructions a detachment of submachineguntoting Wehrmacht troopers arrived at the embassy with their own orders to "escort The Honorable American Ambassador forthwith to Maj. General Schwank's headquarters in the Moronville City Hall." Upon arriving there I was ushered into the office Schwank had "temporarily" borrowed from Moronia's PrimeMinister, whereupon the General rose from his desk, snapped to attention, clicked his heels and saluted me with a diplomatically Hitlerless "Heil." After which he placed his arm around my shoulders and called me his "Americanische Kamerad" while leading me to a pair of leather armchairs normally reserved for those more informal conversations the PrimeMinister preferred having with his foreign visitors.117 After apologizing for the "heavyhanded security measures" he had taken to arrange our meeting, Schwank explained "there were still some local troublemakers roaming Moronville's backalleys raising cane over what they claim is your cowardly betrayal of their socalled 'special relationship' with America by not at least trying to prevent we Germans from exercising our options under the perfectly legal terms of our Mutual Protection Pact with Moronia. Believe118 me, Herr Ambassador," he confided, "I am fully cognizant of the delicate position in which we both find ourselves since Germany's declaration of war against America. And, as both an officer and a gentleman, I can assure you any 'horror stories' you may have heard about the fate of your fellow Jews in Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Russia are nothing but the usual antiNazi slanders pumped out by the Bolshevik propaganda machine."119
If there were some sinister psychological warfare purpose behind Schwank's seemingly notso subtle "Jewish horror story" remarks he didn't pursue it any further. In fact he went out of his way to be obsequious by having his catering corps flunkies offer me a smorgasbord of fancy hors d'oeuvres (probably "liberated" from the kitchen of the Ambrosian Royal Palace) along with 5 or 6vintage Rhine- and Mosellewines, followed by demitasses of real coffee.120 When the flunkies departed they left behind 2 bottles of Napoleon brandy and a full box of Macanudo cigars for us to enjoy while we waited for the mysterious reason I had been put under protective custody to reveal itself.
"Believe me, Herr Ambassador, I'm as much in the dark as you are! All I can tell you is this: While we sit here enjoying our brandy and cigars some Foreign Ministry bigshot is winging his way here from Berlin to see you on a matter of what I've been told is 'the greatest possible importance to the future history of Western Civilization.' And if that little news item isn't sufficient to justify any inconvenience you have so far suffered, perhaps you can tell me in what more entertaining way you could spend this evening in a dreary dump like Moronville? According to my sources you have been heard on more than one occasion to complain that your posting to Moronia was a 'sentence of death by boredom.'"
On this point Schwank's information couldn't have been truer. To those few Morons with whom I enjoyed a (more or less) intimate rapport I frequently lamented my "Promethean fate" in the very words he quoted me as using. And, while I was somewhat flattered to learn the Nazis were keeping tabs on me, how could I not be deeply disturbed by the awareness that my faith in Moronic trustworthiness121 had been so foolishly misplaced? Searching my (photographic) memory for the most recent recipient of those clandestine lamentations only a single name surfaced: that of Doris Darlinge,122 one of the waitress at Moronville's Main Street CoffeeShop. Aside from the distinction she enjoyed of being my favorite "paramour," in those days Doris was an attractive young woman who possessed several traits untypical of those one expects to find in the average smalltown coffeeshop waitress—in Moronville or anywhere else. For one thing, she was that rarest of all Morons who, having emigrated to America, voluntarily returned "to spend the rest of her life in the one country she loved better than any other on the face of the earth!"123 And in Doris' case her reasons for doing so couldn't be more inscrutable —or sensational. After graduating from Moronville High in 1936 at the tender age of 16, she suddenly quit her parttime job at the Main Street CoffeeShop, packed her bags and set off for sunny Southern California to, as she put it: "Trade my waitress' apron in for the glamorous wardrobe of a Hollywood filmstar." Which, incredibly, she promptly proceeded to do when, only 48 hours after her arrival in Los Angeles, she was discovered by a freelance talent scout.124 At least she was on her way to becoming a professional actress, if not a leading lady. No mean feat for the average starstruck farmgirl from middleAmerica, let alone one from the turnippatches of Moronia!
Her supporting role in a lowbudget "B" movie125 entitled Gangster Girls Behind Bars was enthusiastically reviewed by both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter—raves which were followed by a feature spread in the June 1937 issue of Photoplay Magazine for her subsequent performances in Sex, Violence & Profanity, Love Is A 4letter Word, and Confessions Of A Parisian Nymphomaniac.126 And with Jean Harlow's premature exit from the BlondeBombshell scene that same year, Doris' prospects for replacing her as America's Number One Sexsymbol couldn't have been better if, as her agent, Max Meier put it, "The Big ScreenwriterInTheSky Himself was plotting your spectacular rise to superstardom127 from the day I discovered you slaving away behind that lunchcounter in Schwab's." As a man with a reputation for having elevated chutzpah to an art form in a town whose major movie studios were all run by former BrooklynBridge, goldbrick and usedcar salesmen, Meier's blasphemous128 Hollywoodization of God wasn't exactly frontpage news. This time, however, his impious metaphor was closer to the truth than even he could ever have dreamt of in his wildest starmaking fantasies.
[NOTE: Since this "story" the author is about to tell you is based exclusively on "facts" he obtained from "Doris Darlinge" (for whose own provenance we have nothing but the author's word!) it should be treated as just that; a story. One which, no matter how idealistically motivated our author might be in tilting at what Cervantes called "those vile novelists who trash the noblest ideas (Chivalry in his day, True Romance in Goldberg's) for a few pesetas," suffers from an acute case of windmillitis.129—J.P.]
AT THE VERY MOMENT MEIER was uttering that blasphemous metaphor both his and his client's fate were actually being decided in a heated debate between Louis B. Mayer and his soninlaw, David O. Selznick, at the MGM studio in Culver City. To fully understand why these 2 Tinseltown Titans were locked in such mortal combat we must turn to that celebrated page in Hollywood's History dated 15 February 1923. On that reddest of RedLetter days Mayer hired Irving Thalberg as MGM's VicePresident-in-charge-of-production. Considering MGM's gargantuan size (by the mid30's it had more than 7,500 employees and was turning out a quality picture every week) Mayer's decision to divide the administrative from the creative functions seemed sensible. The result of this "shared authority" was that the father/son relationship between the older Mayer and his precocious protege Thalberg slowly evolved into a struggle of Oedipal proportions over which of them would play the dominant role in maintaining MGM's reputation as Hollywood's biggest—and best—studio. By 1931 it became painfully apparent to Mayer that Thalberg's "artistic tail" was wagging his "administrative dog." This fact was driven home most forcefully by Thalberg's uncanny talent for always selecting just the right literary properties and then supervising every last detail of their production until he had turned them into the most polished—and profitable—products to roll off the end of any American assemblyline. In 1932 Thalberg suffered a heart attack and Mayer wasted no time filling the gap resulting from his convalescence by putting Selznick in charge of production. When Thalberg returned to work he did so as an "independent" producer, dedicated to making only the most "important" films. "Believe it or not," he told a reporter, "idealism can be profitable. Hollywood is still all about making money, of course, but in the final analysis the quality production, which more often than not turns out to be the expensive production, is the one with the biggest bottom line."130 Despite Thalberg's diminished status in MGM's organizational pecking order, the artistic and moral authority he continued to exert throughout the studio prevented the Mayer/Selznick coalition from completely marginalizing him. And in the Hollywood of 1935, with the Reichstag codifying Hitler's Mein Kampf blueprint for the deYiddification of Greater Germany, "art" and "morality" were no longer dirty (ideologicallyspeaking) words relating to the sociocultural responsibilities of an "industry" whose principal purpose was to entertain the masses—a raison d'etre made that much more compelling by the fact that America was then in the depths of its Great Depression.
Hollywood's Jewish community was deeply divided over the issue of what, if any, role the films they made could—or should—play in the war of ideas raging between the "decadent" democracies and those totalitarian states extolling (and frequently proving) the advantages of a New Fascist World Order in which every train was en tiempo and all forms of interracial hankypanky were strictly verboten. The Discretion-is-the-better-part-of-valor Faction argued that "soapboxes don't belong in soapopera." Moreover, they proclaimed: "Putting any kind of political spin on their movies would only confirm the Nazi propaganda that the Jews controlling Hollywood were part and parcel of a Zionist cabal to enslave the world's gentiles.131 The Jewish Militants' position was encapsulated in that most pregnant of questions put to a meeting of the Hollywood AntiNazi League by Tess Slesinger when she asked her fellow writers—"Gentlemen: are we history or are we mice?" And, if any more convincing were needed she pointed out that in a Nazioccupied America the issue of who did or didn't dominate the motion picture business would be moot. Like their opposite numbers in Berlin who were precluded from working at UFA, Tinseltown's kikes would find themselves banished from the moviestudio scene to some ghetto in southcentral LA, a schtettle in the Mojave or, if Hitler really was a man of his word, ethnic oblivion. The emergence of the Führer, il Duce, and their barbarian counterparts in Rumania, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, the Baltic states and even France represented nothing less than the onset of Armageddon! No! The only "choice" Hollywood's Jews had was to wait like sacrificial lambs for their coming slaughter or use the power God so providentially gave them over the hearts and minds of the American masses to rally their fundamental goodness132 against an evil surpassing any the world had ever seen.
WHAT HAD BEEN THALBERG'S uncharacteristically naive133 attitude toward the "European Jewry question" gradually changed for reasons that still remain hidden within the riddle of his ultraprivate persona.134 In any event, by mid 1935 he was no longer a Mouse but one of the Hollywood AntiNazi League's most impassioned Historymakers. Whether coincidentally or otherwise, at that same time Thalberg was also deciding which of the 2 civil war novels whose film rights MGM had acquired he would turn into his Great American Movie. The first of these was written some 39 years earlier by an "illiterate Negress"135 named Ida Turner-Jackson (under the pseudonym Joan Dark), who claimed she was the grand daughter of that "American Spartacus," Nat Turner.136 Entitled Harvest of Hate, Turner-Jackson's book was set in Mississippi during those turbulent years (1865-77) of the "Reconstruction Era" following the humiliating defeat suffered by the Confederacy. Because of its bold exposé of the devious ways by which a vanquished South and a victorious North both conspired to avoid being hoisted on the petard of an abolitionism whose explosive sociopolitical consequences could only be fully appreciated when millions of formerly chatelized Africans were, according to Amendment XIV of the Constitution, actually as free and equal as any white American—at least of the trashier variety.137 And if this candid look at how America went about the business of systematically swindling its former slaves out of their newly won freedom wasn't enough to prevent the publication of her novel in a society where Jim Crow was still the de facto law of the land on both sides of the MasonDixon line, Ida Turner-Jackson didn't improve her prospects by making that most forbidden of all topics— miscegenationd—the major motif in Harvest of Hate. In keeping with the protocol by which manuscripts are submitted by unknown authors she attached a note to hers summarizing its contents for the publisher's reader as follows:
Based on Shakespeare's Othello,138 "Harvest of Hate" is the tragic story of an illfated loveaffair between Novice F. Moore, a black Union Army General serving as the military governor of Mississippi and Mona Deeds139—"the most beautiful of all Southern Belles" and only daughter of Octavius Deeds, former United States Senator, Confederate Secretary of State and owner of "Edenhall," the largest cotton plantation in all of Dixie.
This one sentence synopsis (sans my footnotes of course) was more than enough to discourage any editor from even thinking about touching such a hotpotato with a pole—or blue pencil—of any length. In those turnofthecentury days no book publisher in his right mind would dare offend millions of southern readers (all of whom were presumed to be white) or— worse yet—run the very real risk of reopening that Pandora's box whose lid it had taken 50 years to nail down since Uncle Tom's Cabin (also written by an "amateur authoress") unleashed the abolitionist whirlwind that swept its bloodred path of destruction through the American land- and (more significantly) dreamscape.140
As is still the case with our native sons and daughters who write serious novels, Turner-Jackson made her literary debut on the other side of the Atlantic—where Harvest of Hate was favorably reviewed by European critics (who never read any book exposing America's political, social and cultural shortcomings they don't like). This was especially so when it came to our "inhuman" treatment of the Indians, Negroes, Chinese and Mexicans on whose red, black, yellow and brown backs we stood—occasionally in spikeheeled pumps—while building our SnowWhiteAngloSaxonProtestantPower Structure.141 In the normal course of even a blockbusting novel's bestsellerdom; and with the increasing popularity of fascist racial theories that were embarrassingly similar to those advocated by the KKK—except for a few dusty and dogeared copies—by the mid'20s Harvest of Hate had disappeared from the European literary scene. So it was no small irony that when Thalberg paid his 1934 visit to Germany its obscure title caught the corner of his eaglelike eye for spotting offbeat but potentially filmable properties only because Dr. Goebbels just happened to include it on the list of "decadent books" to be burned on the University of Berlin's doorstep by a mob of Nazi "students." The German publisher who at that time owned the world rights to Harvest of Hate couldn't have been happier to see such an albatross removed from his neck when Thalberg generously offered him a $100 check (by depression standards equal to several trillion Deutschmarks) for them. Not that Thalberg seriously considered turning his end of the bargain into anything but a rather wistful souvenir of his trip. As he later explained it to Jean Harlow: "I only bought the rights on a hunch that any book the Nazis wanted to burn couldn't be all bad."
What made this speculative transaction even more whimsical was the fact that shortly before his heart attack Thalberg had spent several hundred thousand of MGM's hardearned and in shortsupply dollars purchasing an option on the first draft of another civil war novel. Entitled Gone With The Wind it's prepublication prospects for becoming Hollywood's biggest ever boxoffice bonanza were such a "sure bet if they played their cards right" Thalberg promised Mayer he would "not only supervise every last detail of its production but, if necessary, make my longawaited debut as its director." It was only after his heart attack and conversion to the militant antiNazi cause that he took the time to actually read Turner-Jackson's manuscript—it being the only English version there ever was of her novel. Having done so, however, he concluded: "The obstacles to developing a viable screenplay from it are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable."
"On the other hand," he argued with himself, "could any material be more suitable for making my Great American Motion Picture?" Although according to his doctors Thalberg had fully recovered from his coronary he was convinced his film producing days were numbered; and that whatever time he did have left "should be devoted to only the worthiest of projects." Which in his final analysis of Margaret Mitchell's "magnificent potboiler" meant: No matter how far he stretched his "super elastic flexibility when it comes to balancing my valorous impulses with an equal measure of cowardice" Gone With The Wind could never in a million years rise to such a highminded occasion." As a matter of historical fact, even before the soulsearching he did during his recuperation Thalberg hadn't been "all that crazy about the way Miss Mitchell uses the horrific misery, suffering and death caused by the civil war as just so much scenery against which the antics of an incredibly superficial, petulant, selfish, spoiled rotten, and scatterbrained—if not totally brainless—antebellum debutante are played out in what adds up to nothing more than a secondrate white trash version of War and Peace."142
Book Two Chapter 3 Part 2 Return to Index
Footnotes
107 This Moronic adage has more to do with their abiding skepticism about the sort of pictures painted by artists like van Gogh, Gaugin, Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, Pollock and De Kooning rather than those taken by the cameras of Brady, Adams, Stieglitz, Steichen, Weston and Capa. Nevertheless the average Moron does tend to take even the blackest and whitest photographic "evidence"—Leni Riefenstahl's cinematic "documentary" Triumph of the Will for instance—with more than one grain of salt.
107a Not to be confused with that of the Morons' which, as reflected in the previous footnote, is frequently closer to the truth than ours.
107b "No matter how much gravy you pour on your turnip cutlet it never comes close to tasting like a Tbone steak."
107c Talk about being a big fish in a small pond! Bill Clinton's Little Rock makes my Moronville look like Paris, London, Berlin and/or Vienna at the zenith of their cosmopolitan glory!
107d Thus we have disposed of the Clintonites' photographic claims of neoNew Frontier torchpassing with a grand total of just 92 words!
107e Prior to the Surname Simplification Act of 1974 (designed to stop the intraclan feuds which for centuries was the gravest threat to Moronia's domestic tranquillity and/or its very survival as a microstate,107es1 it was Kriegklutz. The "Krieg" branch of the Klutz clan dates back to the 1st century B.C., when a Vandal king named Addlebrayne enlisted a few itinerant WarHeroes4hire107es2 from Moronia in his (abortive) effort to throw off the yoke of Roman imperialism at the battle of, what Julius Caesar mockingly recorded in a footnote to his Commentaries as, "Halfway Between Nowhere In General And Noplace In Particular." So impressed was Addlebrayne by the "albeit futile but nevertheless fanatical bravery" of his Moronic cohorts he dubbed them—posthumously—with that most praiseworthy of all Vandalisms, Kriegermenschen (loosely translated from ancient German as; "born—or congenital—killers").
107f Originally baptized George (for Washington) Thomas (for Jefferson) Harry (for Truman) Kriegklutz. Owing to their infatuation with all things American the majority of Moronic moms name their "brats" after our Presidents and/or their wives. The Moronville telephone directory (all 5 pages of it) is filled with such first names as Dolly, Martha, Millard, Abraham, Ulysses, Rutherford, Grover, Theodore, Woodrow, Warren, Calvin, Herbert, Franklin, Eleanor, Bess, Dwight, and Mamie. Not that all Morons bear such distinguished handles. Whether by mistake or design some of them (like Jedgar Ballbraker) are saddled with the monickers of those celebrities representing the more colorful—if not seamier—side of our sociocultural fabric, such as: Bonnie, Clyde, Bruno, Benedict, Jesse, Frank, Dick, Spiro, Julius, Ethyl, Holden, Jayne, Anaïs, Mae, Isadora, Aaron, Fatty, Greta, Lee and Gypsy.
107g As it has with the genealogy of such Holy Men as Moses, Christ, Mohamet, Buddha, Martin Luther and Joseph Smith. And in Klutz's case, added to his father's war wounds, there are my inflammatory foreplay exploits to further fuel the fiery debate over his notnecessarilyimmaculate conception.
107h The very cornerstone of Klutzianity is that Article of Faith stating: "Even all Morons are created equally capable of attaining that lofty level of sociocultural happiness pursued by those human beings more generously endowed by their maker with His divine mentality."
108 During the Climactic Phase of foreplay as I practice it—which can last up to 5 or 6 minutes!—my partners are usually so overcome by feelings of joy and gratitude they can only express themselves with screams, sighs, gasps, groans, moans shrieking, panting, cries, howls, yells, barking, squeals, roars, bellowing, bleating, braying, grunts, growls, chirps, croaking, honks, hoots, clucks, screeches, yawping, whoops and /or a general cacophony I can only compare to that made by those brass bands marching past each other in Ives' Holiday Symphony. With the right Moroness or -ette108s1 however, and under ideal conditions I have been privileged (and gratified) to hear my paramours burst into pyrotechnic displays of oratorical brilliance,108s2 intoxicated flights of poetical fancy108s3 and even the odd aria!108s4
109 Were it not for a framed transcription of this tribute hanging above my computer throughout the writing of this novellength Manifesto it's quite possible I might never have finished it. Which isn't to diminish the role played by that Starknaked Blonde Sexgoddess at the corner of Hollywood & Vine. Nevertheless, while Morons Awake! did in fact begin to "write itself" shortly after my Mt. Olympus Epiphany there were times when its "ejaculatory" flow of words slowed to the merest trickle; and I was forced to generate a new head of "seminal steam" with nothing but the seat of my own literary pants.
110 The moronic vernacular for any attractive female under the age of 50. And, as you will shortly see, while all Bimbeauxs are famous for their "brainless blonde beauty," Maria Bimbeaux was (and will always be!) in a class by herself.
111 Like most of my postWWI generation (America's first Babyboomers) I was raised in an extremely sheltered environment publicnuditywise where, even at the height of the Roaring20s, the fullyfrontalized sight of a naked woman—or man for that matter—was considered anything but the cheap thrill it has become.
112 This was another of the "scrap of paper" jokes Hitler had played on Czechoslovakia, Austria and the USSR. The idea that Moronia could—or would—protect Germany is one whose whimsicality can't be overstated. But, as fate would have it, the Morons had the last laugh when, from his besieged Führerbunker, Hitler implored112s1 his "Moronic brothers-in-arms to establish a second front in the Soviet rear to relieve the pressure on Berlin."
113 Only God knows why, but since Charlemagne's time it has been an axiom for all those seeking the conquest of Eastern Europe to do so only after they have occupied (or at least diplomatically neutralized) the socalled "strategic strongpoint" of Moronia. Hence from Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II Moronia was, if not the apple of every Russian Tzar's eye, always present in the corner of it should some threat arise from the west.
114 And humiliation over being blindsided by a development I might have foreseen if my analysis of the geopolitical situation hadn't been so short sighted. In point of fact I made the same mistake the average Moron makes by always jumping to the obvious (and invariably wrong) conclusion. In my defense, however, it should be mentioned that diplomats much older and supposedly wiser than I had failed to foresee the pivotal role Moronia would (almost) play in altering the course of human history WWIIwise.
115 As it turned out this was yet another of those optical illusions resulting from Moronville's miniscule size. The actual number of Germans who "invaded" Moronia amounted to less than 2 dozen; which Gen. Schwank itemized in his Memoirs of a Teutonic Warrior as follows: 2 Schutzstaffel (1 2nd Lt. and 1 corporal), 4 Gestapo (1 desk sergeant & 3 "plattfüssen"), 17 Wehrmacht personnel (1 Maj. Gen., 1 Captain & 15 assorted/enlisted types).
116 To make matters worse, this one was signed by Cordell Hull himself!
117 In those preWWII days Moronia's Parliamentary head of state was still a puppet chosen by the king's Chamberlain; who was the real power behind the Ambrosian throne. From 1939-45 the PrimeMinister was an exturnipfarmer named—unfairly but well—Blånding Milquetøstê. Like most politicians with nothing to do he spent his office hours entertaining what few visitors he had by telling them the stories he heard as a child at the knee of his seafaring father. Most of which were of the saltiest possible kind. Oddly enough I found these crude tales of nautical smut not uninteresting and, during my early days in Moronia—as one who also had very little to do in the way of official embassy business—I regarded my "fireside chats" with Milquetøstê as the cultural highlight of my all but nonexistent117s1 social life.
118 I found out later, of course, that nothing about Maj. General Karl Emmanuel Schwank was what he represented it to be. Aside from the fact that only 48 hours before his "blitzkrieging" of Moronia he was a lowly second lieutenant118s1 (and in the catering corps at that!) "General" Schwank wasn't even German! A native of Copenhagen his Danish name had been Otto Beorn before he adopted a long list of aliases to avoid prosecution under even the liberal antismut laws of that most openminded society. Karl Emmanuel Schwank was the stage name he finally settled on during his interwar stint as the Master of Ceremonies in one of Berlin's more decadent subterranean cabarets, the notorious118s2 "Skit Skat Klub." His postwar "career" as an impresario staging "Hollywoodstyle Revues" in the sleaziest of South America's cantinas, and a ProducerDirector in some of offoffBroadway's offier theaters was quasiimmortalized in a pair of unproduced dramas entitled The Che Play, or To Bolivia or Not to Bolivia? and The Great American Hitler Play.
119 Actually I'd forgotten all about my concentration camp fears until this reminder. As for Schwank's assurances to the contrary, since his credentials for being both an officer and a gentlemen were of the most suspect variety, I was left with a Hobsonesque choice when it came to who was less of a threat to my continued viability: the Hitlerian devil I was dealing with in person or the Stalinist one waiting in the postwar wings to rule a world devoid of both Jews and capitalists (insofar as any meaningful distinction could be drawn between them)!
120 Which, even during the best of times was a luxury only those of us with hard currency could enjoy because of Moronia's chronic trade deficit. Since the outbreak of hostilities in September, 1939, the only "coffee" available to everyone (including the American ambassador) was a vile brew made from roasted turnipseeds which, strangely enough, tasted very much like the instant product of today—but lacking the bittersweet aftertaste of those romantic(ized) memories one has of sipping that wartime "witch's brew" with his Moronic acquaintances while discussing what life would be like after the war when, among such other luxuries as Hershey bars, fresh eggs and gasoline, "a cup of real java could be had at the drop of a hat."
121 There are exceptions to every rule. And this one doesn't materially alter the fact that, owing to their childlike simplemindedness or because of some still undiscovered genetic trait, the Morons are (for the most part, and in their own words) "as loyal as the dogdays of August are long."
122 Not that I was ever able to verify this for a fact. As Doris herself says when asked, "Listen, Buster; namewise it's always been part of a waitress' mystique to keep her customers in the dark."
123 My research into this matter indicates that since 1846 only 3 other MoronAmerican immigrants ever returned to Moronia permanently—and 2 of them were forcibly repatriated after their conviction as anarchists. As for the third (a certain Benedict Arnold Nïtwïttê) his repatriational motives and/or the lack thereof remains, alas, forever shrouded in mystery.
124 Contrary to the mythology surrounding Lana Turner's discovery while sitting at the lunchcounter of Schwab's Drugstore, it was actually Doris Darlinge who Slapsy Maxy Meier first spied with his eaglelike eye working behind that legendary lunchcounter.
125 Now a "cult classic" frequently shown on latenight television.
126 Adapted from the play of the same name, this was (despite its title) actually one of Hollywood's first truly artistic films.
127
Meier's principal claim to everlasting showbusiness fame was his coinage
of this (now debased) hyperbole; for which he is only occasionally given
credit. His most promising bid for genuine cultural immortality is buried
in yet another brilliant but unproduced script written by the author of the
previously mentioned To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? entitled Private
Parts, or; The Great American Hitler Play—one of whose characters
is based on Meier's "talentscout" exploits during those wonderfully wicked
Weimar Republic days when the limelight of Berlin's UFA studio lured countless
numbers of starstruck farmfräuleins into the Protocols of Zionlike
clutches of jüdisch mädchenhändlers (Jewish
whiteslavers).127s1 But perhaps the cruelest of all those slings and arrows
suffered posthumously by the late and unlamented Max Meier is the fact that:
While he was a charter member of the club formed by German intellectuals
who found their way to Hollywood after fleeing Hitler's Third Reich in the
1930's, his name is never included with those of Fritz Lang, Herbert Marcuse,
Rolf Nuernberg, Elizabeth Bergner, Arnold Schoenberg, Max Horkheimer, Erich
Maria Remarque, Ernst Deutsch, Fritz Kortner, Mordecai Gorelik, Bertolt Brecht,
Billy Wilder, Max Reinhardt, Peter Lorre, Lion Feuchtwanger and the brothers
Mann.
And, as long as we're on the "Slapsy Maxy" Meier subject;
unlike Max Rosenbloom, his nickname had nothing to do with prizefighting.
He got this pugilistic handle from having starred in a 1929 production of
Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped—which, as its title suggests,
concerns a circus clown whose entire act consists of receiving slaps from
everyone else in the company. After 312 performances and a grand total of
9,762 slaps it isn't surprising Meier complained about suffering from the
same symptoms afflicting punchdrunk boxers. "But," he would add emphatically,
"my brains were beaten into pulp for a cause far worthier than that of pandering
to the bloodthirsty proclivities of some mindless ringside mob! No matter
how much of my IQ was permanently lost by never pulling a single one of
Andreyev's punches; when the audience left the theatre—whether they
knew it or not—they were considerably wiser than when they arrived!"
128 For all their lipservice to art and culture Hollywood's moviemoguls regarded all writers as, in Sam Goldwyn's words, "an unnecessary evil."
129 So far my efforts to verify a single one of Doris Darlinge's "facts" from MGM, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, UCLA's Archive of "B" Feature Films, Photoplay Magazine, the Library of Congress, Actors Equity and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have all come up empty.129s1 The author attributes this "factual black hole" to the devious activities of the global conspiracy seeking to sabotage the publication of Morons Awake! or—failing that—compromise his credibility so fatally no one will believe a single word he says about the Klutz Affair. As for why he insists on playing into the hands of his enemies with this most dubious of all the tales he has so far told; the author is, strangely, mute. Nevertheless I think it's clear that, like so many other writers who "take their craft seriously," he is seeking to debunk the mythology surrounding that "Greatest Of All American Novels and Major Motion Pictures"—Gone With The Wind. But while pursuing this worthiest of causes he is not unmindful of the very real risk he runs of so antagonizing his female readers (to whom GWTW is a literary masterpiece) they will refuse to accept any more of his insults to their intelligence—even at the cost of denying themselves the "blissful consummation" of all those climactic prospects for the sake of whose perpetuation they have so far endured a "virtuoso exercise in novelistic foreplay" which at times (especially like this one) seemed interminable.—J. P.
130 Neal Gabler, An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood, Crown Pub. 1988, p.223
131 According to a 1931 "White Paper" written by Goebbels: "Motion pictures were superseding religion as the opiate of the masses."
132 Under the prevailing circumstances that uncookable gristle of Old World Jewbaiting found at the bottom of America's "melting pot" was infinitely preferable to the Europeans' habit of periodically practicing the pogroms they preached. While never rising to the level of that pact Churchill was willing to make with the devil for Hitler's defeat, Hollywood's Jews were (and to some extent still are) far more willing to put their faith in the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution than in all those Biblical guarantees for their continued survival as God's "chosen people."
133 After a 1934 visit to Germany he opined there would be plenty of fatalities before the final curtain came down on the Third Reich but "Hitler would eventually disappear [and] the Jews would remain." [An Empire Of Their Own, p.339.]
134 For all his "princely aura," what there was of Thalberg's social life bordered on being positively monastic when compared to that of the typical Hollywood mogul.
135 Judging from her choice of title, pen name and subject matter—not to mention the sophisticated literary style she used in telling her "simple story of the unrelenting struggle by black folks for social justice" Ida Turner-Jackson was considerably more than "the humble selftaught authoress" she advertised herself as being.
136 The slave who was legally lynched in 1831 for having had the gall to organize an insurrection against the sovereign state of Virginia.
137 Petardwise, the picture comes to mind of that expression on Wiley Coyote's face when he suddenly realizes the bomb he's been building for the Roadrunner's demise is about to explode in his face. But before we start throwing stones at those Yankee hypocrites and Confederate scofflaws for trying to weasel out of the moral corner into which they had painted themselves137s1 we should ask ourselves if we are any less guilty of a similar conceit in thinking the astronomical National Debt we've accumulated since deficit spending our way to prosperity became an article of America's newfound faith in the Ponzification of the Federal Reserve System can be retired by sitting down some day in the distant future and simply writing the world's largest rubber check?
138 So complete was this ban on the subject of interracial sex (where the male member in such a criminal partnership was black) that not until 1950— more than 3 centuries after Shakespeare wrote it—did Othello have its premiere on any American stage; when Orson Welles shocked an audience of Broadway theatergoers (who were expecting to see him play Hamlet) with a "sneak preview" of the Hollywood film he would make the following year.
139 These obviously contrived names are, of course, anagrams. Novice139s1 F. Moore =Moor of Venice. Mona Deeds=Desdemona..
140 Not even Harriet Beecher Stowe ever claimed Uncle Tom's Cabin was a literary masterpiece. Nevertheless her novel did more to shape the future of American (and therefore world) history than any other work of fiction. Yet its authoress is never given the credit she so richly deserves for simply having imagined she might help trigger such a catastrophic upheaval with nothing but her pen, some ink and several hundred pages of blank paper. Like her fellow abolitionist, John Brown—who believed "action was more efficacious than words"—Stowe is something of a pariah when it comes to selecting the next subject for a new U. S. postage stamp or another of those "models" from which America's schoolchildren are urged to choose the "roles" they will "play" as adults. One is left to wonder whether our reasons for failing to lionize this pair of genuine American folk heroes can be found in that habit the Morons have for ostracizing anyone who rocks their ignoranceisbliss boat and/or upsets that applecart of "domestic tranquility which keeps Moronia in its pristine state of sociocultural stagnation"140s1 In any event, this 2part question remains to be answered: Is Uncle Tom's Cabin (a) an exception to the rule that even the greatest art140s2 serves only to embellish those pages of history which are written by real hemen; or (b) the novelistic precursor for a book that will one day launch the Second American Revolution and thereby reverse the worldwide decline of Western Civilization?
141 These (for the most part) Franco/German critics of America's racial atrocities conveniently overlook the fact the soil on which they stand is drenched with the blood, sweat and tears of all the Neanderthals, Cretins, Morons, Picts, Celts, Slavs, Saracens, Jews, Gypsies and Huguenots their forefathers enslaved, raped, pillaged, feudalized, tortured and slaughtered by the millions in the name of establishing "ethnically pure" nationstates. Not that their lipservice to racial equality makes ours any less reprehensible. Even so, when the history of America's failure to keep its All Men Are Created Equal promise is written there should at least be a footnote indicating: "From the very start of a noble social experiment based on the dubious philosophic proposition that some truths are selfevident, America's Founding Fathers were playing with a deck hopelessly stacked against them by the scientific certitude that human nature can't be changed at the point of a sword—let alone with the stroke of a pen."
[NOTE. While the same reasoning can be used to argue that Morons Awake! will be no more successful than Jefferson's Declaration of Independence—in the writing of his Revolutionary Manifesto our author draws a crucial distinction between seeking to change the nature of human beings and changing their minds about the nature of being human, which is: The mediocrity of the masses is only a statistical "fact" whose level can be raised by, among other things, the reading of "literary fiction" to a point at which the collective mean becomes a perfect 100 on the Klutzian IQ Scale where zero represents average.—J. P.]
142 These rather serious reservations notwithstanding, on his deathbed Thalberg confessed to Rabbi Edgar Magnin that: "If Harvest of Hate hadn't come along when it did, rather than waste what little time I had looking for the perfect screenplay I probably would have spent it turning what was fated to become America's Greatest Novel into America's Greatest Motion Picture."
Subfootnoes
107es1 Viz, Metrogoons vs Agragoons, Beerboozers vs Schanpsboozers, Turniptruckers vs Garbagetruckers, Footballfreaks vs Baseballfreaks and even Softshoedancers vs Tapdancers.
107es2 Their motto—'Have sword, will travel!"
108s1 A nymphlike creature no older than 15. In Moronia mutual consent is a valid defense to statutory rape. This contradiction in terms isn't exclusive to Moronic jurisprudence; as our own nonsensical legal doctrines of Criminal Insanity, Involuntary Manslaughter, Contributory Negligence and Repressed Memory prove with such disturbing frequency of late.
108s2 For some reason Washington's Farewell Address and Churchill's Blood, Toil, Tears & Sweat speech are particular favorites.
108s3 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" "How do I love thee?/ Let me count the ways," "When I am dead, my dearest/ Sing no sad songs for me," "How sweet I roam'd from field to field/ And tasted all the summer's pride/ 'Till I the prince of love beheld/ Who in the sunny beams did glide!"
108s4 Del primo pianot, si, straniero, quando sei giunto; Je viens celebrer la victoire; Die Zeit im Grunde; O messager de Dieu and, of course, Liebestod. Return to text
112s1 Third Reich Archives, vol. 65583FBM5/6 (Führerbunker Message Log for May 1945).
117s1 Since at that time (1941) I had yet to even begin developing my foreplay artistry most of the "amorous adventures" I had with the natives were, while far more civilized, no less disastrous than those reported by the legionnaires of Alexander the Great, Trajan, Attila and Genghis Kahn who mistakenly thought they could rape their way through Moronia's dimwitted female population as easily as they had pillaged its turnip storehouses.
118s1 The Army High Command (OKW) couldn't bring itself to dignify the Moronia campaign (Operation Sheiskopf) by putting even the lowliest of its career officers in command of such a mindless enterprise. Accordingly they promoted Schwank to the rank of "acting" Major General in keeping with his (alleged) theatrical background. Not that he was the only parvenu catapulted into highest echelons of a regime headed by a 2ndrate postcard painter whose "luminaries" included a failed playwright (Goebbels), a chickenfarmer (Himmler), a champagne salesman (von Ribbentrop), a 3rdrate architect (Speer) and a vendor of automotive lubricants (Eichmann). Among the most valuable legacies left by Hitler's Third Reich and Mussolini's Fascist Italy is the one expressed in the Moronic axiom that goes: "No matter how completely a dictator might dress himself in the trappings of political priesthood it doesn't take a rocket scientist to visualize the extent of his human shortcomings."
118s2 Made infamous for its staging of scatological sketches—hence "Skit Skat." For what it's worth; according to Schwank the Skit Skat Klub was one of Hitler's favorite nite spots. Apparently the Führer had a weakness for offcolor material of a distinctly fecal hue. A fact that might explain his odd choice of "sheisbraun" for the shirts worn by the SA and the decor of the Nazi Party Headquarters (the Brown House) in Munich
127s1 For what it's worth, one of the most successful ploys practiced by predatory pied pipers like Meier for gourmandizing their lecherous way through the schlag (cream) of Germany's young womanhood was to pose as judges for the "Bathing Beauty contests" they advertised on the back of matchbook covers and endpapers of the trashy romance novels furtively read by millions of schoolgirls who concealed them between the covers of their note- and textbooks. As you will shortly learn when we return to that stage where Maria Bimbeaux is still standing in a state of the starkest nudity, the efficacy of this stratagem isn't limited to nubile farmfräuleins (or ravishing Moronettes) when it comes to exploiting that flaw in the feminine mystique by which most women can be flattered into not only revealing themselves in the fullest kind of frontality to a perfect stranger wearing a rented tuxedo but swallow hook, line and sinker every one of the 4letterlike words with which he so slyly baits his seemingly erudite conversation.
129s1 In response to a query placed on the Internet I did receive a message from someone claiming (anonymously) he was the President of the Des Moines, Iowa Chapter of The Doris Darlinge Fan Club. Our subsequent "dickering" over the price I would be willing to pay him for the proof I wanted so desperately ended when it became obvious to me (the author disagrees strenuously) I was dealing with a dirtyminded cybercreep who had nothing to offer me but the tedium of reading what he thought were "the handsome terms" of his attempt at psychosexual extortion.
137s1 Make no mistake about it; from slavery's outset in the mid17th century, every southern planter knew his descendants would eventually have to pay the bill for all the African blood, toil, tears and sweat that went into the building of their neoclassical allAmerican mansions.
139s1 According to the authoress, Novice is pronounced "No vice." And, along with a middle initial representing "Forever," the result—No Vice Forever Moore—is not unlike that produced by the names of such Puritan preachers as Godswillbe Dunne, Moral Leigh, Chapter Andvers, and Blessed Arthumeke. The long line of black "underground evangelists" from whom Novice was descended began holding their "midnight masses" in the slave quarters of Virginia's earliest tobacco plantations. Capitalizing on the "providential" fact that, for legal and accounting purposes, their African surname (Obote) had been changed to that of their owner (Moore) these "Midnight Ministers" baptized their sons and the sons of their sons with such "splendiferoussounding appellations" as Freedom Forever Moore, Justice Forever Moore, Equality Forever Moore, Peace Forever Moore and Salvation Forever Moore.
140s1 Believe it or not, dear reader, this quote is from an official Chamber of Commerce brochure ("The Land Where Time Stands Still") advertising the benefits of a holiday spent in Moronia. For some strange reason the Morons think we Americans might find the idea of wallowing in someone else's sociocultural cesspool a refreshing change!
140s2 i.e., Michelangelo's Pietá, Goya's Desastres de la guerra, Picasso's Guernica, Remarque's Im Western nich Neues, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Kubrik's Paths of Glory, Grosz's Ecce Homo and, last but not least, the New Testament.