The Jazprose Diaries

View Details

In case you haven’t heard, Beyonce is in the pro cess of releasing a new album. It’s called Renaissance, and it’s already making waves. Not only does the cover evoke a feminine archetype, the music we’ve heard so far is a defiant but ultimately uplifting rebuke of oppression as a right-wing Supreme Court tightens its grip. On today’s Jazprose Diaries—”You Won’t Break My Soul.”

In the 13th century, about 200 years after her death, Lady Godiva of Coventry, England, re-emerged as the stuff of legend. There is nothing in the historical record about her riding naked through the town on horseback. But today that story is synonymous with her name. Somehow a woman who died around the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) has ridden into legend, mythology, and the Collective Unconscious itself.

A few days ago, this image returned to public awareness but with a twist. This time the (near) naked lady on horseback was none other than Beyonce Knowles-Carter, aka Queen B.

This isn’t just coincidence

According to the legend, Lady Godiva’s husband had levied an unfair tax on the people, which created an impossible burden for them. When she asked him to remove the tax, he said he would only do so if she agreed to ride naked on horseback through the middle of town.

As is often the case with men of power, he underestimated her. She called his bluff and rode not into history but into the human psyche. As with the legend of King Arthur, her story has risen above the events of her actual life.

Why did this happen?

Proposition: The legend of Lady Godiva arose during a time of great suffering and oppression. During the 13th century, taxation was routinely burdensome, leading to eventual uprisings like the Peasant’s Revolt. From the Black Death to the Witch Hunts to the Inquisition, the 13th century was the epitome of Life’s a b*h; then you die.

At its most fundamental mythological level, the Godiva story is a manifestation of the Feminine Principle as a bringer of comfort, consolation, and relief. It’s not unlike the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, which occurred in 1917 near the end of World War I, and at Lourdes in 1858, during the European economic crisis caused by the American Panic of 1857. Nor is it very different from the lasting legacy of Princess Diana, whose reputation for service and loving-kindness seems to have transcended the turmoil of her actual life.

Beyoncé has claimed no such significance for her new album, whose just-released track is called “Break My Soul.”

My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment, a place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom. It was a beautiful journey of exploration.

This statement is a testament to her authenticity as an artist

It’s a perfect description of the artist as a conduit through which something greater than herself can flow. Even though her immediate focus was personal, Beyoncé has tapped into a universal theme. Like other manifestations of the Feminine Principle, her Renaissance album is a spontaneous eruption of that releasing, renewing energy at a time when it’s needed most.

She dropped the new album cover on the same day Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman to become a Justice of the Supreme Court. Although Justice Jackson will undoubtedly become part of the court’s liberal minority, her presence on the high court is itself a measure of deliverance.

Both things occurred as a conservative majority on the Court, representing a minority of the US population, handed down a controversial religious-themed ruling regarding school prayer and expanded gun rights.

The same court limited the government’s ability to control climate change. And oh yeah—it also overturned Roe v. Wade, which took away a right that had been in place for two-and-a-half generations, the first time the high court has taken such a drastic step.

Not only that, this right-wing Court has agreed to hear a partisan redistricting case before the election, which threatens to limit the ability of state courts to intervene in cases where gerrymandering serves as a form of voter suppression.

If all of this were not enough, Justice Clarence Thomas is calling for the court to strike down rulings on contraception and gay marriage. After the Roe decision, some people on social media were even calling for a reversal of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended discrimination in public schools in 1954. Although none of these things is likely to happen, it’s easy to see what a mess we’re in.

Everything looks so bad

Turn on the news. Everyday the merchants of fear report new things to be afraid of. You’ll never see a female news anchor on any network show up naked on horseback for her job selling bad news to the people. They want you to know how terrible things are. Their personal fortunes depend on making you feel bad.

But the Lady Godiva motif evoked by Beyoncé tells a different story: Don’t worry. Everything will be alright.

Here are four reasons for believing that’s true

Several legal scholars have already pointed out that there are ways to out-maneuver the current right-wing court. UC Davis law professor Aaron Tang wrote in the New York Times that it’s possible for state legislatures to counteract a ruling’s impact by writing new laws or expanding the definition of existing statutes already upheld by federal courts. We’ve already seen some of this play out in the State of New York.

Three other law professors have pointed out that federal laws & regulations pre-empt or take precedence over state law. So for example, the Executive Branch could challenge state laws that conflict with the FDA’s regulation of the so-called abortion pill (mifepristone) & also support lawsuits filed on those grounds.

It will probably take time, but there may eventually be another legal opportunity to establish a woman’s right to choose at the federal level. Ruth Bader Ginsburg always thought Roe v. Wade was the wrong case for settling the abortion issue. She felt it would have been better to take an incremental approach on a case by case basis, creating precedents and establishing a woman’s right to choose on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause, which is mentioned in the Constitution, instead of privacy, which is not.

The next generation will not stand for this. They may be very different from their grandparents, the Boomers, but they’re not too far removed from a line in the rock opera Tommy by The Who. “We’re not gonna take it. Never did and never will.”

The timing of Beyoncé’s Renaissance is genius

What better time than July 4th, Independence Day, to think again about the birth of our nation, the principle of equality it was founded on, and the importance of renewal and rebirth.

On this 246th birthday of the United States, perhaps Beyonce is telling us to stop living in fear and to remember the ineffable power of the Feminine Principle. Maybe it’s time, like the song says, to embrace a new vibration, find new motivation and a new foundation. Maybe it’s time to tell the enemies of our founding values—You won’t break my soul.

Thanks for reading/listening. Please help me find new readers by hitting the heart-shaped LIKE button, the balloon-shaped COMMENT button, or the comment and SHARE buttons below. Thank you!

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

When I was a kid…

One of our neighbors rang the front door bell with an irresistible deal.

We’d known this man and his family ever since we moved to the neighborhood. He lived in a white clapboard two-story home in the middle of the block. He had a good job with an insurance company and wore a business suit to work. On weekends, he moonlighted at a second job, and on Sundays he went to church with his family.

But on this day, this seemingly honorable man was selling sirloin steaks that had been “confiscated” from a delivery van.

'“They’re hot, he told my mother, but don’t worry—they’re still frozen. I can let you have 5 pounds for two bucks.”

At the time, the average price of sirloin was 64 cents a pound (I know, I know!) and usually out of our league. We ate chuck. To get sirloin for 40 cents a pound was unheard of.

“Hot?” my mother said. “You mean they’re stolen?”

“Not stolen,” our neighbor told her. “Confiscated. The way I look at it, the white man has been stealing from us Black folks ever since day one. I’m not stealing—I’m just claiming what ought to be ours in the first place.”

“Well, I don’t care how you describe it,” my Mom said. “I don’t want anything to do with stealing. I need you take those things away from here.”

This past Father’s Day, I repeated the story to my son.

He’d been telling me about some fellow he’d come across who got rich filing lawsuits against his employers in order to collect large financial settlements. This guy’s rationalization was the same as the steak-stealing neighbor from my childhood. The system is rigged. So why not take all you can while you can.

Naturally, I was delighted to hear that my son disagrees with this way of thinking. It was the best Father’s Day gift he could have given me.

When you grow up with a woman like my mother, you hope that her example of honesty and integrity will rub off on you. It felt good to know my son had absorbed that legacy.

But I wasn’t just influenced by my Mom

To grow up in Atlanta during the Civil Rights Movement was to breathe the same air as the heroes we now venerate for their courage.

Because I lived in that place at that time, I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., newspaper editor Ralph McGill, John Lewis, and many others, including Charles Weltner, the patrician white Southerner who broke ranks with the segregationist Southern Bloc to make passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill possible.

All these people influenced my life

So did the teachers at my elementary school, who refused to pack up and go home when the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on the school lawn when I was in fourth grade. As did the ordinary everyday folks—neighbors and friends, Blacks and well as whites—who laid their bodies on the line to stand up for a principle during that difficult time.

We all think we know the story of the Civil rights Movement. It’s old hat by now, isn’t it?

Here’s what’s not old hat—courage. That’s what it took to keep on marching, praying, and singing while dogs and firehoses were set loose on you during peaceful protests. Maybe it’s because I grew up when all that was happening that I admire people who do things like that. Their example has become part of who I am.

The way I see it, courage shouldn’t be a rare commodity

But it is. That’s why we should be filled with gratitude and admiration when we find it.

In my last post, “Young Mike Pence,” I turned to satire to express the sense of frustration I feel at the high rate of gun violence in our country, the inability of Congress to enact meaningful legislation to end it, and the rush to turn Mike Pence into a hero for not caving in to the enormous pressure to disobey his oath of office. After all, didn’t Mr. Pence spend four years enabling his boss?

Satire is a useful rhetorical tool for holding vices and follies up to ridicule. But it has the limits. And while it may be clever, sometimes it misses the deeper truth.

The other side of the coin

For me, that deeper truth is this: If I were to see Mike Pence walking down the street, I would rush over and thank him from the bottom of my heart. On January 6th, he had the courage to do two things I admire. First, he refused to leave the Capitol during the riot because he did not want history to record that the Vice President of the United States had fled the premises and abandoned his duty to certify the vote. Something that’s never happened before.

Second, he stood up to the illegal requests of his boss and listened instead to a higher call—his own moral compass.

If Mr. Pence had not acted with courage that day, who knows where our country would be now? As his attorney Greg Jacob testified during Day 3 of the January 6 hearings, failure to certify the election or to name Trump the winner by choosing a slate of fake electors would have led to fearful consequences for the nation. An irreparable crack in the cornerstone of our democracy.

It is not impossible to imagine

Rioting in the streets on a level we have never witnessed. Nor is it impossible to imagine martial law, which at least one Trump adviser had suggested even before January 6.

Martial law in the United States?

It is not impossible to imagine a situation in which the military could have been forced to take decisive action of its own, which may or may not have been favorable to the former president.

We have seen these things happen in places like Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Myanmar. We never dreamed the United States could have come within a hair’s breadth of a similar outcome.

But on January 6th, that’s exactly what could have happened if Mike Pence hadn’t kept his head when all about him were losing theirs. I am truly grateful to him for that. And that’s something my satire did not cover.

But here’s a question

If the country had been irrevocably damaged on January 6th, would people have cared as much as they cared about reports that Kim Kardashian had damaged Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dress?

The one Marilyn wore at Madison Square Garden when she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John Kennedy? The one Ripley’s Believe It or Not paid nearly $5 million for?

For me, there was an aspect of sacrilege about anyone besides Marilyn wearing that dress, especially since she died 10 weeks later. By putting her body into that dress, Kim Kardashian messed with its mzimu, a Swahili word meaning spirit. Kardashian mixed her DNA with Marilyn’s, thus becoming the pop-culture equivalent of a fake elector.

The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah unwittingly raised another equivalency when erroneous reports claimed Kardashian had damaged the dress:

“If you are entrusted with a piece of American history, you better do everything you can to take care of it. Everything.”

If that’s true for a dress, shouldn’t it be doubly so for our democracy? Shouldn’t the rest of us be doing everything in our power to take care of it? I mean, everything.

Some people already have

On Day 4 of the January 6 hearings, I learned about courageous men and women who not only endured enormous political pressure but outright threats of violence simply because they refused to disobey the oath they had taken to uphold the Constitution.

Each of these people reminded me, in his or her own way, of A Man for All Seasons, the story of Thomas Moore’s execution for refusing to support Henry VIII’s wish to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

That happened on July 6, 1535, which seems a long time ago. And yet history repeats itself whenever any man or woman is forced to choose between doing the easy thing and doing the right thing. They may not face beheading as Moore did, but they do face doxxing, death threats, and loss of livelihood.

Over the course of the January 6 hearings, I have come to admire Republicans whose political views differ from mine. Because during a time of great personal and political crisis, they chose to rely on the moral compass they live by.

For one man, it was the Bible he carries every day.

For another, it was the belief that the Constitution is divinely inspired. During Day 5 of the hearings, three top-ranking members of the justice department relied on the law and their sworn oath to uphold it.

Each of these people was answering the same question that is put to us all. Do I identify with my ego, which will cease to exist when my body gives out? Or do I identify with the part of me that lives forever? In short, Do I have a soul?

Fortunately, Republicans like Arizona Speaker Rusty Bowers answered in the affirmative. Not only does he have a soul, he has a conscience.

Loaves, Fishes, Miracles

There were many times when I was growing up that my mother found strength and inspiration by reflecting on the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes in the New Testament to get us through lean times between my father’s paychecks. I’m sure it would have been nice to grab an armful of the stolen steaks our neighbor was selling that day.

But instead of jeopardizing her soul, she chose to make do with beans and rice and ground chuck stretched with oatmeal. There was always some kind of miracle that kept us going during those years, and my mother always gave thanks to God for seeing us through.

As I watched the first five January 6th hearings, remembering how I felt as the riot unfolded on TV, I realized anew what a miracle it is that our democracy has lasted this long.

We dodged a kryptonite bullet on that day

And I feel grateful to the men and women who held on to something higher than themselves and in the process managed to keep the democracy intact.

It worries me that many of the rioters believed they were acting out of principle too. As some of them stated in video played during the January 6 hearings, they believed they were fighting to save the democracy from a fraudulent election.

For them, this was a matter of principle just as adhering to the Constitution was a matter of principle for people like Mike Pence and Conservative Arizona Republican Rusty Bowers, who resisted pressure from the former president and his allies to turn his state’s results over to the legislature without any evidence of fraud.

Sadly, the rioters put their faith in a lie. A lie Ashli Babbitt lost her life for. Although right-wing media spins her death as martyrdom, it was the lie that killed her.

Demon seed

Donald Trump’s Big Lie is the demon seed of the belief that protecting capitalism is more important than preserving democracy. It’s also the evil offspring of the post-truth era, a time when "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

The Big Lie works because post-truth is real. Emotion speaks louder than facts. That’s why 25 million people continue to believe the election was stolen despite all evidence to the contrary.

That’s why thousands of people, emotionally worked up by post-truth rhetoric, attacked the Capitol on January 6. That’s why many others issued death threats to ordinary citizens like Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, who served as poll workers in Atlanta. It’s why a mob became angry enough to chant, “Hang Mike Pence” outside the capitol.

Eve of destruction?

In 1965, Barry McGuire reached the Billboard Hot 100 with a song called, “Eve of Destruction,” which catalogued the long list of social issues during the turbulent 1960s. That song was the musical equivalent of street preachers carrying makeshift signs that say: Repent. The End Is Near.

But the end has been near ever since the days of John the Baptist. It was near during the Hundred Years War, the Great Depression, and two World Wars. The end is always near.

And yet we are still here. Why is that?

Dylan Thomas would say we’re here because of the force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Charles Darwin would say we’re here because of natural selection. Joseph Campbell would say we’re here because of the hero with a thousand faces.

But I like my mother’s answer best. The woman who refused to buy stolen steak that day would say we’re still here because of the daily miracle. She would say the daily miracle comes from a divine source—and therefore the supply is endless.

She would also say Republicans who followed their moral compass and chose not to support the Big Lie were also part of the daily miracle. And maybe that’s why America’s fragile democracy survived an attack from within that day.

Finally, I think she would say just keep on keeping on. Because the only way to stop these daily miracles—is to stop believing in them.

Thanks for reading/listening. Please hit the LIKE, SHARE, or COMMENT buttons to help others find my work.

Further reading

Gloria Steinem: Marilyn Monroe—The Woman Who Will Not Die, 1986

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

It all started after Day 3 of the January 6 Hearings

Which turned Mike Pence into an 11th-hour hero during the Capitol Riot. That’s when the big three networks embarked on a frantic race to bring some version of his story to television.

For a while the front-runner appeared to be The Fly Catcher—a series about how the lackluster VP and MAGA yes-man becomes transformed after he’s bitten by a pansexual insect during a televised debate with Kamala Harris.

Pitched as “Spiderman meets The Fly meets Do the Right Thing,” the show’s premise turned on the idea that even a robotic human can find the courage to do what’s right when he accepts his place in the Marvel Universe and learns to orgasm.

“This is what today’s 18-49 demographic wants to see,”

Said show runner Rhonda Grimes. “Let’s face it, we’re trying to sell cars and makeup here.”

But that project floundered when the producers failed to work an interracial romance into the story line. Also, while several actors expressed interest in portraying the fly, no one in Hollywood wanted to play the former Vice President.

Another offering that bit the dust early was the Dick Wolf-inspired Law & Order, Seditious Activities Unit, put forth by NBC. Apparently, those producers blew it by casting Sam Waterston as the Vice President.

“You can’t take a guy who played Nick Caraway and Jack McCoy and turn him into Pinocchio,” said one insider who preferred to remain anonymous. “The hair’s right, but Waterston’s image oozes too much integrity. He’s already a real boy.”

For the time being, it looks like the CBS network will be first out of the gate this fall with Young Mike Pence, a multi-decade prequel to the January 6th riot, which looks at several seminal events in the Veep’s childhood.

Billed as a reluctant coming-of-age story

The series foreshadows the last-minute heroism during which Pence finally grew a pair, saving America from a major constitutional crisis and the nation’s first foundational threat to the rule of law in 230 years.

The pilot begins with Caroline Kennedy bestowing the annual Profiles in Courage Award on Mr. Pence as his surrogates on Team Normal sing Negro Spirituals based on the Book of Daniel in the background. Then the scene shifts to Young Mike’s first encounter with a bully on the school playground, a fat kid with red hair who bosses other kids around and gets away with it.

The mad dash to elevate Mr. Pence to hero status is a perfect illustration of how things sometimes take on a life of their own—a phenomenon known as the Frankenstein Effect.

What it is

Coined by a Belgian consulting firm in 2011, the Frankenstein Effectis what happens when ideas and concepts fly free of their creator without any regard for the global concept. When this happens on a massive scale, it becomes a monster—a construction of unconnected modules—that strangles the clarity and direction of the original concept.

Recent well-known examples of the Frankenstein Effect include—the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial, the Oscar Slap Heard Round the World, Bye Felicia, and the political market known as Trumpism, which will likely continue to live after its creator has disappeared.

On this 50th anniversary of Watergate, everyone from Politico to Fox News to Bill Maher is busy comparing Woodward and Bernstein to the recent Bye Felicia incident at the Washington Post. But the firing of a reporter (whose name really is Felicia) for engaging in a Tweet storm with her colleagues is not as funny as some would like to think.

Granted, it’s not as funny as getting tossed butt-naked from an orgy like the Felicia of Straight Outta Compton. Nor should it be. But just like Amber and Johnny, it’s a perfect example of the staggering power of the Frankenstein Effect. The way it takes off like wildfire on a windy day, threatening everything in its path.

You know what else is not funny?

The 25 million* Republicans who still believe the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged, fraudulent, and ultimately stolen from Donald Trump—the so-called Big Lie. Not only is that not funny—it’s downright scary.

The 25 million (who account for 70% of registered Republicans) believe the Big Lie even though the Trump campaign submitted 180 claims in 62 lawsuits, half of which were thrown out for lack of standing—( e.g., you can’t bring a lawsuit about something that happened in Pennsylvania if you live in Texas) while the rest failed because they lacked evidence and were unable to make their case.

The 25 million believe the election was stolen even though every hand-recount has shown no evidence of fraud on a scale likely to change the outcome.

They believe it even though Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani had his law license suspended for making false and misleading claims regarding the election in a court of law.

Although the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol has documented all these things in painstaking detail, it is sadly unlikely that the 25 million have bothered to watch the public hearings.

It’s easy to understand why they’re skeptical

Compared to Young Mike Pence or Will Smith slapping the sh*t out of Chris Rock at the Oscars, the hearings are boring. Also, the 25 million may very well regard them as a partisan witch hunt—just like they view the Trump-Russia probe and the two impeachments.

That skepticism naturally increased when the Democratic leadership in the House removed three Trump loyalists who all but telegraphed ahead of time that they intended to divert attention away from the former president’s role in the attack and focus instead on things like poor security at the Capitol. You can see why the Dems felt they had to do what they did, but the optics are not good.

As a result, the 25 million will probably never see the sworn public testimony from members of Trump’s own inner circle. Most of whom have stated under oath that they could find no evidence of fraud, knew the election was not stolen, and communicated all of this to the former president. A man who nevertheless continues to proclaim just the opposite to this very day.

Even former Attorney General Bill Barr testified that Trump behaved like he was “detached from reality.”

But don’t tell that to the 25 million

Why? Because the Big Lie has taken on a life of its own. Even if Trump himself were to suddenly announce that he’d been joking the whole time, the believers would continue to believe that somehow, some way, the election was fraudulent.

That is the Frankenstein Effect writ large

On April 25, several weeks before the January 6 hearings began, ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news agency, released a trove of emails and interviews it conducted with leading advocates of the Big Lie.

Their research shows that Trump’s claims of election fraud could not have taken hold with the public to such a large degree if those claims had not been repeated again and again by surrogates who promoted the falsehood in the news media and on social media platforms.

Those interviews revealed that all these advocates knew their election-fraud claims had been disproved, disputed, or dismissed as dubious. And yet, they continued to push the rigged-election theory into the communications ecosystem.

When confronted with the report’s findings

Most of these people dismissed them outright. But perhaps the most telling response came from Joseph J. Flynn, brother and spokesperson of Michael T. Flynn.

“Stupid report. No one wecare about will read it.”

That’s how confident he was that the Frankenstein Effect had taken hold. Not only will the 25 million not read such a report, they won’t even hear about it on any media outlet or social media feed they follow.

For them, the Big Lie has passed from the realm of reason into the realm of faith. It would be easier to convince an evangelical Christian that the Bible was written by Dr. Strange than to get them to accept the outcome of the 2020 election.

Which brings us to the Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association, and Uvalde

This is where the Frankenstein Effect is literally killing us.

According to historian Heather Cox Richardson, at the time the Constitution was written the “right to bear arms” was generally construed to mean part of an organized militia. Although the amendment’s language is broad, even the Supreme Court upheld this concept for decades. So did the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Richardson writes that prior to the 1970s, the NRA supported federal legislation to:

limit concealed weapons;

prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill and children;

require all dealers to be licensed;

and require background checks before the delivery of any firearm.

It backed the 1934 National Firearms Act

and parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act, designed to stop what seemed to be America’s hurtle toward violence in that turbulent decade.

But in the 1970s, according to Richardson, a faction of the NRA forced the organization to part with its own traditional support of gun sportsmanship (hunting, skeet-shooting, etc.)—and to focus instead on “gun rights.”

They formed a political action committee (PAC), hired a PR firm, and began pumping money into the idea that the Second Amendment protected the right of individuals to own any gun they wanted to.

In the words of the Brennan Center for Justice, this was how the NRA rewrote the Second Amendment.

It’s also how they helped put 20 million AR-15 style assault weapons into the United States. Our nation of 332 million now has more guns than people.

Although the power and financial resources of the NRA have waned in recent years, thanks in part to in-fighting within the organization, all that previous effort has paid off just like the Big Lie has paid off. Fifty years of NRA campaigning has created a constituency that no longer needs NRA input to maintain a chokehold over Congress.

Those heavily marketed ideas now have a life of their own.

Mike Spies is a senior writer at The Trace, a magazine that covers gun violence exclusively. During an interview the day after 19 children and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas, he told the PBS NewsHour that the NRA has created a monster over which it has lost control. It has constructed its own Frankenstein.

Here’s the Irony

In Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster winds up killing its creators. Dr. Frankenstein dies from disgust and pneumonia, and his partner Henry Clerval is murdered by the very monster he helped create.

Shelley’s story of a modern Prometheus is a cautionary tale for today’s America.

As the highly respected conservative federal Judge J. Michael Luttig pointed out during Day 3 of the January 6 hearing, the Big Lie promoted by Donald Trump and his associates remains a serious and ongoing threat to our democracy.

But that other monster threatens us every single day too—where we shop, where we pray, in hotels, in spas, in hospitals, in movie theaters, on the streets, and even where our children go to school.

It’s a good thing we can count on Congress to create a pathetically inadequate “framework” that will give them something to campaign on for the midterms, while doing little, if anything, to save us from another Uvalde.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can kick back and wait for CBS to release the first episode of Young Mike Pence. Because sometimes, half a hero is better than no hero at all.

_________________________

(According to PolitiFact, as of June 10, 2022, 70% of the 36.4 million registered Republicans in poll after poll believe there was election fraud during the 2020 election.)*

Thanks for reading/listening. Please hit the like, share, or comment buttons to help others find my work.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Greetings from The Twisted Panty!

The trial may be over, but idle minds continue to look for ways to kick a girl while she’s down.

Revealing a level of sophistication not seen since Herschel Walker announced a cure-all spray for COVID-19, social media influencers are no longer content to see the defeated movie star penniless.

They want her permanently squashed under the dominating boot of hashtag superiority. Of course 300 fake Twitter accounts do not a majority make. Even if their influence spreads as far as TikTok and Instagram.

But it only takes a few social-media accounts to wreak havoc on a disliked target

Inquiring minds have already noticed how the online echo-chamber exalts idiots and elevates pariahs into wronged victims of wokeness on a regular basis.

In other words, 10 thousand Frenchmen licking — that’s liking (damn autocorrect)— a hashtag do not a truth create. It’s just a sound and fury signifying nothing but a bunch of folks with nothing better to do.

But who needs a life? Especially when celebrities provide an endless supply of meretricious fodder like #turdgate?

Ah #turdgate! At last there’s an appropriate metaphor for the pop swizzle some folks call a zeitgeist. Who needs a toilet when you have luxury sheets with an infinite thread count?

(By the way, has anyone actually seen what people do on movie sets? There’s a lot of sitting around and re-shooting scenes. There’s a lot of bad acting, too. And long breaks followed by tantrums and the pulling out of hair. But who cares, as long as the stars get paid millions for packing us into the theater where we can forget all our troubles and spend a small fortune on popcorn?)

If this sounds like sour Gilbert grapes or something, it’s not

In fact, the Twisted Panty is actually grateful to the trial for pulling up the Tupperware cover on our troubled world and releasing some of the depressingly foul air trapped beneath the cloud of war, inflation, and multiple mass shootings. Not since the trial of Derek Chauvin has there been such a rush to televise a verdict.

And talk about delayed gratification. Who scripted the scene where the judge tells the jury to return to the deliberation room and fill in the amounts? Pure genius. Bated breath and nervous pacing until at last the seven jurors take possession of their seats and announce awards totaling millions of dollars. What timing! What brilliance. What a way to steal from Ryan Seacrest! Just wait till awards season. Golden Globes, Oscars, Slaps all around.

Of course there’ll be an appeal

But appeals don’t re-examine the evidence. They only look at whether something was done improperly or illegally during the original trial. Did the judge give the wrong instruction? Was a juror bribed? That sort of thing.

The only advantage in appealing this verdict is the chance to reduce the amount of the damages. After all, $10.35 million dollars is a lot of cheddar when you only had an estimated net worth of $8 million before the trial began, especially when your legal fees are already hovering at $6 million.

But social media isn’t satisfied with the humiliation of losing and the threat of bankruptcy. They want her crushed. They’ve already got a petition with 4.5 million signatures currently circulating on change.org to remove her from her current film, one of two she finished before the trial began.

The Twisted Panty enjoys a good gossip as much as Lady Whistledown

But really, what’s the point of nailing shut the coffin now that the trial is over and the verdict handed in? Why does the internet want to kill her dead?

Surely there’s something else at play here

Is it merely that the jury didn’t go for all that tearful testimony? That they didn’t like being addressed directly so often? (Bad coaching.) That they weren’t convinced she was telling the truth after she’d been caught in a lie(s)? That they weren’t sure how much of her testimony was…well — acting?

Was the jury really swayed by the former husband’s detached references to his ex as “Miss” while she repeatedly used his first name as if they were still married or only recently divorced when it ended five years ago?

Was the jury swayed by the collective identities of the former husband?

A man who’s been a cultural icon for almost 40 years? Or were they swayed by the crowds outside whose posters supported the husband more than the wife? And just how much social media did these un-sequestered jurors see during the 10-day recess, when hashtags favoring the husband outnumbered those for the wife by nearly 18 billion? Billion!

Did the jury know that he lost his role in the Harry Potter franchise after the wife’s op-ed appeared? Or that his starring role in another seaworthy venture was canceled?

Was this marriage really over five years ago?

Or are these two people still linked by the mutual acrimony often found on the dark side of failed love? So much to ponder.

Even this. Was the jury’s verdict its own version of the president’s Enoughspeech? A smack-down of the #MeToo movement and a signal that any future attempt to take down a male power figure had better be backed up with credible provable evidence? Was the verdict a green light to domestic abusers whose abuse reportedly increased substantially during the COVID lockdowns?

Or was the verdict simply the reinforcement of a culture-borne misogyny that never really went away just because #MeToo sent Harvey Weinstein to prison for sex crimes. Or caused Les Moonves to be ousted from CBS? And Matt Lauer forced out of 30 Rock, never to set foot on the Today Show again? Yes, all those giants toppled like the statues of Confederate generals. But did the misogyny ever really go away?

The Twisted Panty thinks not.

Hatred of women is real. The infamous trial had had the wrong poster child — that’s all. There were too many holes in her story. There was too much bad behavior on both sides. Did the jury feel that you can’t claim to be abused when you’re also doing some of the hitting?

Unless you watched the entire trial from beginning to end, how can you know what really went on? Unless you were in the jury room, how can you know what the jury really thought and how they came to issue the damages?

But that doesn’t stop folks are re-litigating the verdict on Twitter with some calling it a blow to free speech since the husband wasn’t mentioned by name at all?

While others point to a specific moment at 49 minutes during the wife’s cross examination where she damns herself by admitting twice that she had the famous actor husband in mind.

Who knows why the internet hates the ex-wife so much? Or why verified Twitter accounts are using this case to advance their own talking points whether they’re relevant to the trial or not?

Or why some blame the mainstream media for allowing hashtag justice to frame the public’s perception of these tawdry doings?

From the look of things, all that can be said for sure is this:

The public isn’t finished with this case. Will there be a movie? Will there be a book? Will the appeal overturn the verdict or reduce the damages?

Will the soiled bedsheets of #turdgate achieve the same level of notoriety as Monica Lewinsky’s soiled blue dress?

O brave new world where these questions loom large!

We don’t know if #turdgate is true, just as we don’t know if there’s a pee-tape somewhere in Moscow with a former president’s name on it.

We’ll never know what really went on in that terrible marriage. Except maybe this: The beautiful princess married the handsome prince — and they did not live happily ever after.

May we all be spared this particular fairy tale ending!

Thanks for reading/listening.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Our collective grief over the Uvalde school massacre is a grim reminder that we have been here too many times before.

After I wept over the tragedy and prayed for the victims, I paid close attention to the tsunami of information that flooded our lives after the incident. Buried in all that content were five deep-rooted reasons why our nation is stuck in a tragic Ground Hog Day scenario when it comes to school shootings.

Even as some lawmakers announce bipartisan talks to discuss the usual gun-control reforms—red flag laws, raising the age limit, expanding background checks, making it more difficult for abusive or mentally ill people to purchase guns, redefining who qualifies as a gun seller (we’ve heard them all before)—few believe Congress is likely to come up with a meaningful solution that will prevent another Uvalde, Parkland, Sandy Hook, or Columbine. Another Buffalo, Charleston, Las Vegas, El Paso—and now, incredibly—Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Why is that?

The reasons for this congressional stalemate are not the ones we tend to hear about from the talking heads on either side of the political spectrum. But they run deep and contribute significantly to Washington’s failure to act. It is also difficult to change any of them.

Instead of dealing with all five reasons in a lengthy single piece, let’s look at only one of them today. I’ll circle back to the other four in future articles.

Partisan redistricting is killing our children

When I voted in this year’s Georgia primary, I noticed a telling omission from my ballot. My current congressman Democrat Lucy McBath, a gun-control advocate representing Georgia’s 6th congressional district, was no longer on my ballot.

That’s because in 2021 McBath’s district was redrawn by Republicans in the state legislature, forcing her to run against another Democrat Carolyn Bordeaux, who currently represents the neighboring 7th district.

By gerrymandering the two currently seated Democrats into the same district, local GOP politicians—who have the majority in the state assembly—reduced the Democratic majority in next year’s Congress by one vote.

McBath defeated Bordeaux in the May 24 primary and will likely win against her Republican opponent in November. That’s because the newly redrawn 7th district has become heavily Democratic. But McBath’s old district now includes more rural residents who voted for Trump by a margin of 15 points in 2020.

The newly redrawn 6th district will almost certainly vote red in the next election, giving the GOP another vote in the new Congress. Before the gerrymandering, McBath’s old district voted for Biden by a margin of 11 points.

Here’s the problem

Recent statistics from the Pew Research Center show that people who live in more densely populated urban areas are in favor of some form of gun control. Those who live in rural areas are not.

When rioting broke out in Atlanta following the 2020 shooting of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed Black man, by a white police officer, white residents north of the city rushed to buy more guns. They openly took to social media asking how they could speed up the licensing process and where to buy more ammunition.

Some were responding to online rumors claiming that the rioters were planning to invade communities 30 to 40 miles to the north. White suburban residents were afraid. They wanted to protect themselves if things got ugly. For them, that meant arming themselves.

Purple vs. Red vs. Blue

Before it was gerrymandered, Georgia’s 6th Congressional district was both red and blue—purple. But it didn’t start out that way. This was the district that sent Newt Gingrich to Congress in 1979 and kept him there for 20 years.

But over time, demographics here changed. As with other fast-growing suburbs around the country, its residents became both Democrat and Republican. This diversity led to a more centrist candidate who could appeal to both parties, most of whom were united on gun control.

They might disagree on abortion or same sex marriage, but they cared enough about gun control to send McBath to Washington. When that happens, you get a recipe for talking to your neighbors, reaching across the aisle. Working out a compromise. Getting things done.

By removing most Democrats from McBath’s old district, the GOP has turned it almost entirely red again. Redrawing the district means that a hardline gun-rights advocate will likely win McBath’s old seat in November. That new congressman will be expected to represent the views of the red voters who elected him. If he doesn’t, they will vote him out.

This is how representative democracy is supposed to work.

This is also a recipe for polarization. It’s how gridlock gets created. If you’re sent to Congress by voters who have no need to compromise, you have no need to compromise either. You betray them if you don’t vote their interests when you get to Washington.

There’s no incentive to vote for something your constituents don’t want. To do so is political suicide.

But they do it, too

Yes. Both Democrats and Republicans gerrymander, and they do it for the same reason. To hold onto power by tilting the playing field in their favor. But that doesn’t make it right. And that doesn’t protect our democracy. Districts should be drawn by a nonpartisan commission based on normal geographic boundaries. Why is that so difficult to understand?

The Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering on the basis of race or ethnicity is unconstitutional. It has also said that extreme gerrymandering can also be unconstitutional. But in 2019 in a crucial 5-4 decision involving cases in North Carolina ((Rucho v. Common Cause) and Maryland (Lamone v. Benisek), the conservative majority ruled that although partisan gerrymandering is incompatible with democratic principles, it presents political considerations outside the jurisdiction of the courts.

In a fierce dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the decision imperiled the nation’s system of government, the foundation of which depends on free and fair elections.

In the end, even the courts agree that gerrymandering disenfranchises voters. But they’ve decided to leave it up to elected representatives and the lower courts to correct the situation.

Fox in the hen house?

At first glance, this is like telling the fox to fix the hole that lets him into the hen house. However, state courts have taken the high court at its word. This year, they’ve thrown out redistricting maps in New York, North Carolina, and Maryland. But that’s only three states out of 50.

Meanwhile, justices at the state court level are vulnerable too. They also have to run for office, though in Georgia, at least, those positions are considered nonpartisan.

This is why all politics is local

When we get all fired up over charismatic national leaders and rush to the polls to support them, we often forget how much power is held by local politicians whose names many voters don’t even recognize.

And yet, these local politicians create the national climate that gridlocks America. They take a purple country where most people favor some form of gun control—and turn it into small partisan blocks of blue or red. Blocks that are set up to oppose each other from the start.

Gerrymandering pits one extreme side against another and eliminates important opportunities for compromise within a shared town square. Gerrymandering obstructs democracy at the cellular level. It’s like lupus or multiple sclerosis. Gerrymandering is killing our kids.

By engaging in this pernicious practice, these local culprits—both Democrats and Republicans—have become architects of the polarization that gridlocks DC, making it impossible for Congress to compromise on meaningful gun-control reform.

They may claim to be innocent of what happened in Uvalde. But I wonder—is it possible that they too have blood on their hands?

Thanks for reading/listening. Please hit the LIKE, SHARE, or COMMENT buttons to help others find my stories.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

In the spring of '27, something bright and alien flashed across the sky…and for a moment, people set down their glasses in country clubs and speakeasies and thought of their old best dreams.—F. Scott Fitzgerald

On the morning of the big announcement, Langston found the hairless face of his 9-year-old self staring back at him in the bathroom mirror. He shook his head, blinked, then looked again. But the vision was still there.

His boyhood face wore the same Coke bottle eyeglasses, which had led inevitably to the nickname that followed him all through school. Cokie.

His kid-self had bushy, not-quite-nappy hair that stood out around his head like tumbleweed. One of his front teeth had a chipped corner from when he tried walking backwards down a flight of concrete steps to impress Fanniette Thomas, a saffron-skinned fourth-grader who hadn’t even noticed.

Yep. It was Young Langston alright. This was the image he’d been unwilling to conjure a few days ago during his monthly visit with Dr. Peep Toe.

“It’s called regression therapy,” she’d said. “Sometimes it helps to understand how the inner child feels about who we’ve become.”

Langston did not want to know how his inner child felt. What was the point of growing up if the past still had a hold on you? His kid-self was gone. The thick glasses replaced with contacts. His tumbleweed hair shaved down to marble-smooth baldness in keeping with the times.

Grownup Langston had a beautiful wife and two fine sons who’d made it all the way to college. No drugs. No jail. No baby mamas.

Pictures on the walls of his suburban home revealed a smiling well-adjusted family—decidedly middle-class—at picnics, basketball games, graduations, bowling tournaments, and on the sunny deck of a gigantic Caribbean cruise ship.

Langston had become everything a successful American Black man was supposed to be.

So why did he feel that something was not quite right—off? And how could this so-called inner child scratch that itch?

Instead of responding to the psychologist’s questions, he focused on her grammar. Was it correct to say who we’ve become? Shouldn’t she have said whom we’ve become? He tried diagramming the sentence in his mind, an exercise that kept him occupied for the rest of the hour. As a result, the entire $200 session, like others before it, had been a waste of time. On every level except one.

Dr. Peep Toe was easy to look at.

She had shapely waxed legs and a symmetrical face. She wore round eyeglasses over blue eyes that seemed permanently set at F/1.4. Wide open. Like the Nikon lens he’d recently bought for a tidy sum on the Internet. Sometimes he felt he could tell her anything. But just as he reached the point of surrender, he’d detect a clinical distance behind that come-hither mask. This was the kind of woman who would kiss you with her eyes open.

Her real name was Jennifer Dinsmore, PhD. But Langston liked thinking of her as Dr. Peep Toe. Everything about her was buttoned up and strapped down. She wore modest knee-length skirts (no thigh, thank you) and silk pastel blouses (no cleavage, either) under tailored two-button blazers, the uniform favored by HR professionals and female candidates for public office.

She came across as neutral, nonthreatening, asexual. Like a secular nun. Except for her shoes. Jennifer Dinsmore, Ph.D., favored heels with an opening at the tip through which two apple-red toenails poked out like excited ganglia.

Langston hadn’t wanted to enter therapy. It was Jinx who pushed him to do it. Jinx, his mentor and friend. Jinx who was right about everything.

“We all need a tune-up once in a while,” Jinx said. “Besides, the company’s paying. You might as well do it.”

So far, Dr. Peep Toe hadn’t helped at all. Langston still had trouble sleeping. Still worried that his wife might someday leave him. Still felt stuck on a bullet-train speeding at 200 miles per hour toward the wrong destination.

Not that he didn’t enjoy talking with the psychologist. Sometimes, like last night, she appeared in his dreams wearing only her undergarments. Now here was cleavage, here was thigh, here were those sexy open-toe shoes. During the nocturnal visit, she looked at him inquiringly, her question from their last session still on the table.

This dream had opened a portal he tried to keep closed during their sessions. The face of his kid-self in the mirror took him back to his third-grade class at St. Michael’s. He saw himself in a white shirt, blue necktie, and a navy blazer with the school’s monogram embroidered in gold thread over the breast pocket. He’d only been an average student, remarkable for nothing except his tumbleweed hair and thick Coke-bottle eyeglasses. Until one particular day in third grade.

“Why did God make you?”

From the mouth of Sr. Margaret, the question felt like the cross-examination of a hostile witness. She’d been scribbling words from the Baltimore Catechism on the chalkboard, an oversized rosary dangling from her waist, black veil trailing behind her like batwings. Then, she spun around and pointed a wrinkled white finger right at Langston as if divine revelation had singled him out as the pupil least likely to know the answer.

Langston had no idea why God made him. But he wasn’t about to let this pale white nun make a fool of him in front of the entire class.

With the innocence of a cherub, he boomeranged the question right back to her.

“Because He wanted someone to go bowling with?”

The thirty-odd witnesses to this exchange needed little excuse to disengage from the rigid conformity of their daily lot. They let go with watery-eyed abandon, hooting, clapping, slapping their palms on the desks—a commotion that halted abruptly when hoar-faced Mother Agnes, her eyes fiery over the top of wire-rimmed glasses, flung open the classroom door.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“Mr. Ragsdale thinks God created him because He needs a bowling companion,” seethed Sr. Margaret, whose wimpled face had turned red.

“I’ve had quite enough of your nonsense, Mr. Ragsdale,” the principal said. “You think you’re a comedian? We’ll see about that. Come to my office this instant. The rest of you, get back to your lessons!”

Langston stole a look over his shoulder as he followed the snowman-shaped figure of Mother Agnes from the classroom. A wave of satisfaction swept over him. His classmates were back in their invisible strait-jackets now. But for a moment, he had released them. Brought them joy. He, the unexceptional Langston Ragsdale— Cokie—had done this.

From that day forward, he had only one wish. Maybe Mother Agnes had put a name to something he had always known. Maybe it had nothing to do with her but sprang from his own impromptu stroke of genius. Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, something crystalized within him in his third-grade class that day as he bowled a perfect strike against Sr. Margaret. That’s when he knew for sure that he did want to be a comedian. To spend the rest of his life making people laugh.

Shaving his increasingly gray stubble while the smooth face of Young Langston gazed back at him, he remembered the dark side of those growing-up years from which the comedic urge had sprung. The chaotic eruptions that came without notice as his parents’ after-midnight arguments woke the household.

Arguments over things he did not understand. Lipstick of a color his mother did not wear. The dented Oldsmobile languishing flat-tired in the driveway. His father’s expensive Panama hat. The whiskered gray-haired Watkins man, who went door-to-door selling medicinal products from a leather case.

Why any of these things should lead to the breaking of glass and the overturning of chairs was a mystery. As were the shouts, tears, and whispers that eventually seeped into the walls, biding their time till summoned again like ghosts.

And yet despite these unpredictable outbreaks, Sunday nights had a quality of light about them, which began with the beam of a black-and-white TV set, then grew like a campfire into an enfolding luminescence.

The TV was a floor-model RCA encased in mahogany. Sunday night was the only time the family sat down together after the usual dinner his mother cooked to mark the specialness of the Lord’s Day: roasted hen, collards, white rice, and sweet potato soufflé. For Langston, those evenings surpassed even the Catholic Mass for which they denied themselves breakfast on those same Sundays, fasting in order to receive the sacred Host.

Except for the bread and wine of Holy Communion, God was invisible. But you could see George Burns, Jack Benny, and Sid Caesar on television. Flip Wilson and the as-yet untainted Bill Cosby, too.

“Take my wife, please,” said one comic. “I get no respect,” said another. And even though Langston had no idea why these jokes were funny, he laughed because his parents sniggered with wry nervousness, their troubles seemingly behind them.

What he admired most was how the comedians brought his family together. How the high cheekbones of his father’s clan seemed to merge more closely with the deep-set eyes and long noses of his mother’s side. How ineffably linked they seemed as they teetered on the edge of a punchline. Trying to catch the joke.

Langston rarely thought about those days now. But with his nine-year-old self staring back at him in the mirror that morning, he understood what he must have known instinctively as a child. Like the lotions, salves, and ointments brought to their door by the gray-whiskered Watkins man, laughter soothed the inflammation that flared up all too often in his childhood home. It was the balm that relieved the pressure of his parents’ daily scramble to make ends meet.

Distracted by these memories, he nicked his chin. Blood drooled from his face, tracing a thin red line into the white hollow of the sink. He tore off a square of tissue and stuck it to his face to stanch the flow.

“Well, today’s the day,” Denise said, lightly kissing his cheek at the front door to keep from smearing her lipstick. Then tapping his chin near the tissue, she said: “Guess you’re a little nervous, huh?”

“Yep, today’s the day,” he repeated, ignoring her allusion to the razor cut.

“I’m so proud of you, Langston. You’ve worked a long time for this. I wish the boys could be here.”

The “boys,” named for positive Black role models just as their father had been, were grown men now with lives of their own. Frederick was in his final year at Georgetown. Nathaniel was on a fellowship in London and sounded increasingly British each time he phoned home.

“They gon throw us out of the NAACP if that boy don’t snap out of it,” Denise said after one of Nat’s trans-Atlantic phone calls. This was as close to a Black accent as Denise could manage these days. Like Langston, she had lost the ability to code-switch long ago.

“We should celebrate,” Langston said. “Why don’t you put on your high-heel sneakers so we can trip the light fantastic like in the old days?”

Denise held him at arms-length, her eyebrow arched.

“You want to go dancing on Zoom?” She held up a surgical face mask, then pressed it into his palm like a folded dollar bill.

“I have plenty of these in the car,” he said, “and hundreds more at the office. Don’t know how I could let myself forget about the plague, even for a moment.”

“Don’t worry, Lanky. I’ll get Door Dash to deliver a five-star Zagat-rated meal, and we can have one of those nice wines we’ve been saving for a special occasion.”

She held out her cheek so he could kiss her.

“And Lanky?” She paused, weighing her words. “Nobody says ‘high-heel sneakers’ or ‘trip the light fantastic’ anymore. It’s dated.”

Dated.

“I’ll trip your light,” he said, feeling some of the old passion stirring again despite himself.

He didn’t mind that Lanky, her pet name for him, had replaced the Cokie he’d grown up with. What he minded was that this woman, whom he had loved all his life, had remained somehow unattainable after all these years. Though he possessed her physically, had watched her give birth to their sons, he’d never been able to shake the feeling that he was not quite good enough for her. That she would one day stab him in the back, if she hadn’t done so already.

“Has your wife ever given you a reason to doubt her?” Doctor Peep Toe had asked.

“No.”

“Does she stay out late, flirt, receive secretive phone calls?”

“No.”

“Do you do any of these things?”

“No.”

“Then why do you suppose you feel this way?”

“If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.”

End of Part 1

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Can it be that our long national Rorschach test is finally over? I’m talking about The Slap, of course. Not those dreadful Supreme Court hearings.

Although Charles Blow used the term Rorschach first, that is the appropriate metaphor for what we’ve been through since the Oscars. There are as many takes on events like this as there are people with cell phones and TV sets.

What one sees depends upon what one looks for. But also on what they’ve experienced in their own lives. When everybody’s sharing their two cents on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, what you get is a cacophony. A modern-day Tower of Babel.

Nobody understands anybody else because everybody’s too busy shouting their own view.

Nobody’s right. Nobody’s wrong. But nobody learns anything either. There’s just a lot of…well, noise.

Approximately sixteen million viewers saw The Slap when it happened. Hundreds of millions more have seen it replayed on national TV and social media. They’ve seen a thousand memes and heard a thousand takes. And everyone sees something different.

Why, just yesterday a woman who read one of my recent pieces took me to task for not blaming Chris Rock more and for not pointing out that “words hurt just as much as physical violence.”

I held back from reminding her that the people of Ukraine might disagree with her.

This is a reader-supported publication. I hope you enjoy reading my stories and appreciate the time and effort that go into writing & recording them. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. The best way to join the community and support my work is by taking out a paid subscription. Thank you!

Is it finally over?

But can it be that the Academy’s decision to ban Will Smith from the Oscars for the next 10 years will put an end to this obscenity once and for all?

Is everyone happy now that he can’t come to the party or walk down the red carpet — but could still get nominated for an Oscar during the ban?

Is it possible that TV networks will finally stop replaying the incident an average of three times per story not counting two to three closeups of Chris Rock’s face just after the larger man’s hand smacked down on it?

Will the conspiracy theorists claiming this was all a setup finally slither away and go back to watching Info Wars?

With The Slap behind us, will we return our gaze to the tender moment between Lady Gaga and a wheelchair-bound Liza Minelli?

The moment when someone younger and stronger lent a helping hand to someone who used to be just as young and strong and said, “I’ve got you.”

Will the networks now begin to show Lady Gaga and Liza Minelli an average of three times per story? Yeah, they will. They must. I’m sure of it.

What the future holds

Meanwhile, now that the 10-year-ban has been slapped upon the former rapper turned slapper, there are people at Apple+ TV who may find themselves breathing a bit easier now.

In the aftermath of The Slap, Apple+ TV is not as fortunate as Netflix, which put its Will Smith project Fast and Loose on the back burner before the Oscars. As for Smith’s other project, Sony’s Bad Boys 4—its future remains uncertain too. Smith reportedly hasn’t even seen the entire script yet.

Millions at stake

Before the Oscars, Apple+ TV had already sunk a reported $120 million into Emancipation, starring Will Smith as Peter.

It’s the story of a real-life runaway slave engaged in a perilous escape through the Louisiana swamp in his journey to join the Union army.

The real-life Peter of Emancipation is known for the picture of his heavily scarred, whip-welted back, which has become an iconic example of slavery’s inhumane cruelty.

Perhaps more than anyone else, the executives behind Emancipation had every reason to see The Slap put to rest as soon as possible.

With Emancipation already in post-production, they may even be considering a rewrite that takes The Slap into account. Somehow. Some way.

Remember ‘The Morning Show’?

Hollywood watchers may recall that The Morning Show with Jennifer Anniston, Steve Carell, and Reese Witherspoon had already been green-lighted when the #MeToo movement began and Today Show anchor Matt Lauer was fired for sexual harassment.

As a result, the producers were forced to rethink the entire series. When real life becomes more fantastic than fiction, it’s make-believe that has to bend with the times.

With Emancipation hovering in the wings and those financial interests breathing down the necks of The Academy’s Board of Governors, one has to wonder whether ethics and the much-talked-about code of conduct had as much to do with accelerating Smith’s punishment as that massive investment in Emancipation.

Not being a Hollywood insider, I do not know the answer. But I can think of 120 million reasons why one might have had more influence in the decision-making process than any other.

Was a 10-year-ban enough? Was it even fair?

They could have taken his Oscar. They could have banned him for life. They could have turned him into an object lesson.

But with that all that loot hanging in the balance, did The Academy’s Board of Governors really want to vilify Smith as much as all that?

After all, Smith’s image has to shoulder the burden of a starring role in a major film project that’s already underway.

Does the Board really want the audience to think too badly of him? Let’s just get this off the table and out of the public eye ASAP.

But is there a lesson for the rest of us in all this?

I think so. For those of us who do not have any actual skin in this game, maybe putting The Slap to rest signals that it’s time to stop amplifying that assault.

Maybe it’s time to turn our attention away from the Bad and the Ugly. And to gaze a little longer on the Good, the Kind, and the Compassionate.

What we witnessed at the Oscars reminded me of Greek tragedy.

In Smith’s case, it was Greek tragedy light. No one died. But there are similarities.

The fall of a popular movie hero was brought about by what Aristotle called an inherent tragic flaw.

Watching it aroused feelings of sadness in the audience, feelings not unlike the pity and fear evoked by Greek tragedy. Those feelings are meant to teach us things laughter cannot.

What is the takeaway?

The lesson of Greek tragedy has nothing to do with what The Slap says about African Americans, the suffering of Black women, the appropriateness of hurtful jokes, the heartbreak of alopecia, the message violent acts sends to children, the white gaze, or whether standing up for your woman is really a form of patriarchal overreach.

These are all valid and important perspectives on the incident.

But Greek tragedy offers another quite different lesson: This can happen to you. You too may have a tragic flaw. You too may invite your own demise. Be mindful of what you’ve seen here on this big stage — and take heed.

It does not take a knowledge of Aristotle to understand this. All we have to do is look in the mirror or sit down and reflect on our own lives. The things we did today and the days before that.

And ask whether we meant to do them. And how, upon honest reflection, we might do them better the next time around. And then resolve in our hearts to do whatever it takes to be that better, more loving version of ourselves in the days ahead.

The kind of person who says, “I’ve got you.”

Thanks for reading/listening to the Jazprose Diaries today. Please hit the like, share, or comment buttons to help others find my stories.

This is a reader-supported publication. I hope you enjoy reading my stories and appreciate the time and effort that go into writing and recording them. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. The best way to join the community and support my work is by taking out a paid subscription. Thanks!

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Last night before the sky got dark, Jeff Snow passed me on the dock and did not speak as he went by. I saw him first, about 20 yards before we met, his face distinct in a tangle of tourists. I knew who it was, but I didn’t say anything either.

Ordinarily, Jeff would not stand out in a crowd—he’s an average-looking guy with brown hair. But he walks with a limp that distinguishes him when he might prefer to remain unnoticed.

Sometimes the limp is more pronounced than at others. You see him leaning on his cane, wrestling with some force between the dock and his wrist, his head and forearm trembling with effort. That’s when he gets this unusual look in his eye. Like he’s focused on something about 45 degrees due east of everydayness. It’s not a look that goes inward like the enlightened gaze of a guru. It’s the kind of look you see in a veteran’s hospital or a home for the aging. The look of someone who’s here but not here. On Jeff, it’s something you notice because his eyes, blue as bachelor’s buttons, seem too young to have such a look.

He doesn’t always look that way

Nor does he always struggle so intensely with the cane. But when he does, I leave him alone. I don’t pull him out of his thoughts for the sake of my mundane hello. That’s why I let him pass me on the dock last night without speaking. I watched as he looked right past me, and I let him go.

There was a space of about three seconds as we moved five, maybe ten feet apart. Then I heard him call my name.

“Hey,” he said, “I didn’t even realize it was you.”

Smiling, he stretched out his hand to shake mine, so I turned and went back a few paces to greet him.

Jeff is a friendly guy, and I like running into him even though we never have that much to say. We talk sailboats. About his beautiful flush-deck Cal 25 and my sloop-rigged Erickson, which sails, I tell him, a lot better than I do. That’s how we talk. You know how it is. With some people you have the same conversation every time you see them. You just use different words.

But last night, with Jeff, something extra happened

“I’ve got this new roller-furling system,” he said, “and it jammed while I was out there this afternoon.”

He described how the headsail was flapping in the wind and he couldn’t get the new furler to roll it back up like a window shade the way it’s supposed to. He had to tie the tiller so the boat would heave-to—go around in a circle instead of heading off into the rocks. Then he stepped forward to the bow, got down on his belly, and unjammed the mechanism.

This may seem a small thing to someone who has crossed the Pacific or lost a mast in a storm. But it was not small to Jeff. And it was not small to me. It has only been about two and a half years since I first learned to sail single-handed. I know how things can go wrong.

You get a line fouled in a propeller. The fuel filter clogs, the engine dies, and there’s no one out there but you to take care of it. No crew, no wife, no buddy. Just you alone to meet the challenge of the unexpected and get yourself back home. It’s always something that’s never happened before, a crisis that will create you and reveal you to yourself. Whenever I’ve come back from sailing solo, I’m alive with energy for hours.

That’s how Jeff was last night. He wasn’t bragging. I know. After all that time out there alone, he wanted to tell what he’d experienced. But to put it in perspective, he had to add one thing more.

“I was in a coma once,” he said, “and now I’m disabled. One day I was riding my bicycle, and I got hit by a car. I was 16. Now I’m 23. The coma lasted for a month and a week. And then one day I came out of it. I was in a wheelchair for a while, and the doctors said I would never walk again. I made it to crutches, and they said I would probably always have the crutches. But now all I use is a cane, and today, as you can see, I’m not even using that.”

Can you see what this means?

I felt him say between the lines. I was on death’s own threshold once, but today I was in the dance, man. Out there in a pocket of life between the wind and the current, having a blast.

I wanted to embrace him. Instead, I looked down at his legs, thin and uncertain in Bermuda shorts, and saw the scars that proved his past.

“It was seven years ago yesterday that I came out of the coma,” he told me. “This is the seventh anniversary of my coming back to life.”

There’s probably something significant about the number seven in all this. It may be simply that Jeff’s body remembers he once did something extraordinary at this time of year and commemorates it now by yet another extraordinary deed of a different kind. Or maybe there is a mystical, numerological side to it. Some occult, psychic thing I am not able or interested enough to pursue.

And yet, I was happy last night because some guy I hardly know, and almost did not speak to, had gone out alone in a sailboat. I said goodbye to Jeff on the docks and forgot all about the Olympics when I got home.

That was then; this is now

Years later, after I had left the island and had long since given up my sailboat, I reconnected with Jeff via Facebook. When I originally published the story of our encounter in the Seattle Weekly, I changed his name to protect his privacy. But a short time later, Reader’s Digest republished the piece as “Kevin’s Conquest.” Although his real name had not been used in the story, Reader’s Digest had a wide enough reach that it soon became clear on that remote island at the edge of the continent that the pseudonym applied to Jeff.

“You should have used my real name”

He said when I saw him after the Reader’s Digest piece appeared. “If you ever write about me again, please use my real name.”

This was an easy promise to keep, but I was not able to find a publisher for the book I eventually wrote that mentioned Jeff.

Maybe that’s a good thing because it turns out there was one other element to his story I would find out much, much later from one of his Facebook posts.

After his bicycle accident, Jeff had been unresponsive for some time. The doctors suggested it might be best to remove him from life support. But his father Robert Snow refused to let that happen. Robert always believed his son would regain consciousness. So he stood by, watching for any signs the busy medical staff might miss. His father’s faith paid off. Jeff came round again and was well enough to single-hand his own sailboat seven years later.

Every once in a while I see a post that says, Prayer changes things. And I wonder what kind of prayer—what kind of faith—it takes to bring a boy back from a coma. For that matter, what kind of love.

I once read a book that measured medical outcomes for people who were prayed for against outcomes for those who were not. The author found that people who were prayed for fared better statistically.

Magical Thinking?

And yet, I know of people who refer to this as “magical thinking” and refuse to take it seriously. One was a woman who tried every conceivable treatment to cure her handsome young husband of cancer, and he died anyway. She gets disgusted whenever she hears of folks hoping against hope for that last-minute reprieve. Praying for miracles that she believes will never come.

Another friend was still a teen when his much-loved eldest sister died of a long illness, even though he prayed with all his might for a cure. When she died, he turned to crime and became a juvenile delinquent until a good therapist helped him get in touch with his grief. He eventually became a psychologist himself and has spent the rest of his life helping others.

We want our stories to have happy endings

But they don’t always. We impose our narratives on the lives of others, hoping to find solace for ourselves. Proof that life has meaning. That if we blow on the dice just hard enough, they will roll in our favor. But quantum physics tells us life in an expanding universe is neither random nor predetermined but a series of infinite potentialities. If we move this way or that, say this prayer or another, can those things affect the outcome?

Jeff’s story did not end when he came out of the coma. There would be new stories for him, new struggles, new conflicts. People who don’t know what he’s been through see a middle-aged man struggling to keep his balance—and imagine that he is drunk. A few hurl insults. Some laugh. They do not realize or have forgotten that life can change in an instant. And there but for the grace of God…

To further public understanding and in lieu of wearing a sign that says he has Cerebellar Ataxia from his Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Jeff has posted information online about the lasting effects of his injury. The symptoms of TBI include tremors or shakes, stumbling and difficulty walking, dizziness, short attention span, and difficulty finding words. Although the symptoms are remarkably similar to inebriation, it has to hurt when strangers accuse him of public drunkenness.

The tagline on Jeff’s Facebook page echoes what Atticus Finch told his daughter Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. “Before you criticize me,” it says, “walk a mile in my shoes.”

Over the next few weeks as we watch the Winter Olympics in Beijing, it might be a good idea to recall that not every hero wins a medal. Not every hero is in the limelight. Some struggle alone. Counting victories and defeats we will never see.

Thanks for reading or listening to the Jazprose Diaries. Please hit the like, share, or comment buttons to contribute to the conversation. Have a wonderful day.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Every Thanksgiving, my family gathers in a circle where we join hands before beginning our holiday meal. Beginning with the eldest and moving clockwise from wherever that person happens to be, we take turns sharing the things we’re most grateful for during the past year.

It’s a solemn ritual. Most of us spend a few moments reflecting ahead of time on what we’re going to say. But it’s also fun. Like that time my niece began by saying she’s grateful she’s not 30 yet. Or when one of the boys said,”I’m grateful for my dog—and oh yes, my girlfriend.”

No matter what, we’re always aware of where we came from. Of the hard work and the many sacrifices by my parents and grandparents to keep us going as a family. And to get us educated along the way. We know that whatever we’ve achieved has come about because someone has believed in us, prayed for us, and cared enough to support us emotionally, psychologically, and/or financially.

This year, I’m counting you in that group.

Because you’ve kept me going. By reading or listening to the Jazprose Diaries and sharing your thoughts about my stories and essays. You’ve done it with your paid subscription. Sometimes you’ve done it by buying me a coffee. Or just by remaining on the free subscription list.

Every time you’ve opened one of my stories, or hit the like button, or shared it with your friends on social media, you’ve kept me going. By letting me know that you’re out there. Willing to give me a chance. To hear me out. To let me tell you a story.

That’s why I’m including you when it’s my turn to speak in our family’s gratitude circle this year.

Thank you for being there for me and with me this year. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing this holiday season, may you be safe, healthy, happy, and blessed. And may your heart be filled with love and with gratitude for your own blessings this year. Be it a dog, a girlfriend, or the joy of being alive—at any age.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1 Chapter 7

Wool Socks

The sun was burnt orange and slightly lower in the sky when we reached Southampton. Its Titian light danced across the rippling waves like a line of chorus girls. A brackish mist replaced the musty smell of the train as cries of yellow-billed gulls pierced the air. Flapping and fluttering above the docks, they were in for a disappointment if they expected the usual handout from this vessel.

I said goodbye to my parents at the end of the jetty. Then turned to make my way up a ramp that led to the silver belly of the amphibious Yankee Clipper. But my mother tugged on my parka mid-step, pulling me towards her.

“Did you remember to pack wool socks in your holdall, Rita?”

The question was as bizarre as it was bizarrely timed. If I had forgotten them, what was I expected to do, run back to the flat?

“Yes,” I lied. “Just like you told me to.”

“Good. It could be chilly on the flight, you know. And you don’t want to catch cold before you arrive for your assignment.”

I turned to go, and she stopped me again.

“And Rita dear, just a word of caution about American men. Cheeky, the lot of them. I remember when they came over during the last war. They’re notorious cads with no manners whatsoever. You’ll want to watch out for them.”

“Thanks, Mummy. But Uncle J. said we’ll be quite sequestered most of the time. I don’t think there’ll be a problem.”

“And Rita, Houseman probably won’t want you calling him Uncle J. when you’re working together,” my father said. “You’ll need to be professional at all times.”

I knew what was happening. It was what they’d done ever since Freddie died. I couldn’t blame them for wanting to hold on.

We stood at the end of the jetty, feeling the water’s undulating sway beneath our feet. Three sides of a scalene triangle bound by blood and bereavement. Acutely aware that once upon a time there had been four.

“Yes, I do know, Dad. I’ve never called him that in public, ever. And I don’t plan to start now. But I’d better go, you two, before this plane takes off without me.”

My mother let go of my parka, and I threw kisses to them before turning again toward the ramp.

End of Part 1, Chapter 7

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1 Chapter 6

Freddie

Mother had set aside her youthful ambition to become a writer in exchange for motherhood and marriage to a promising young barrister. But it had cost her. I was only twelve when I came upon the first signs of “mother’s ruin,” the many Beefeater bottles tucked in the back of her lingerie drawer, hidden behind canisters of flour and coffee, or at the bottom of a clothes hamper. Over the years, her once animated, heart-shaped face had become fixed, a mask concealing more than I would ever know. My affection for her, though tinged with pity, was insurmountable

In fact, I felt sorry for both of them. When I was ten, my brother Freddie died in a drowning accident at the age of fourteen. His death left a gaping hole in all our lives, but it was particularly hard on my parents. I lost a brother I looked up to and admired. But they lost a son.

It was only natural that they’d become protective of me after the accident. I understood that. But at times, I felt like a chunk of saltwater taffy, pulled in opposite directions by the two people I loved most in the world.

My father had always hoped Freddie would follow him into the law. When fate removed that possibility, he transferred that wish to me. He was always talking about Ivy Williams and Helena Normanton, who’d been the first women admitted to the bar.

“There’s no reason why you can’t do that, too,” he would say with his booming gong of a voice. “And it doesn’t hurt to have someone in the family who already knows the ropes, you know.”

He had called me into his study and sat behind his desk chewing on the tip of his unlit pipe the first time he said this. I’d felt as if I were being asked to volunteer for a suicide mission. “I wouldn’t get in your way, of course, but you could always turn to me if the need arose,” he said. “In time, you might even be able to take the silk, rising to the rank of King’s Counsel.”

I wondered if he’d have felt the need to offer similar assistance to Freddie had he lived. To what extent was his generosity fueled by the fact that I was a girl, given to emotion and other inadequacies? But it did not matter. I had no interest in a legal career.

Nor did I wish to pursue the course my mother laid before me. She was glad when I was accepted to Cambridge, but her idea of a higher education was that I should become a suitable spouse for a wealthy, ambitious young man. She might as well have been promoting a marriage out of Pride and Prejudice. Instead of becoming adept at painting and the piano as young ladies did in the time of Jane Austen, I was to become the glib companion of some as-yet-unknown man who might one day become Prime Minister.

But I wanted no Mr. Darcy. I wanted love. And for a while, I had secretly hoped to become a writer. I often scribbled poems in my diary and imagined what it might be like to pen an entire novel populated by creatures of my own imagination. I even started a novel while I was at Cambridge, an experience that felt more right than anything I’d ever done.

It was during this time that I discovered an unfinished novel of my mother’s while rummaging about our attic. I sat on the floor in the slatted light of a louvered gable, reading the yellowed pages of what could have been a remarkable book if only she’d finished. It was enough to bring my own ambitions to a screeching halt. I felt I’d never be able to write anything nearly as good. Seeing what she might have become, it seemed all the more pathetic that she should forego her talent for family life, only to succumb to alcohol after Freddie’s death.

If losing him had made my parents fiercely protective of me, it caused me to feel the same about them. The war with Hitler only exacerbated my apprehensions about their safety.

“You need to get out of London, too,” I told them. We had just taken our seats in a musty compartment, which retained the odor of every cigar that had ever been smoked there.

My mother patted my hand and pressed her lips. “We’ll be fine,” she said. But the gesture seemed to contradict her words. “We’re heading to East Anglia in just a few days. It’s far too tight for all three of us with your grandparents hobbling about. And frankly, it will be a comfort for us to know you’re safe in far-away America.”

“Yes,” I said ruefully. “Far-away and stubbornly isolationist.”

End of Part 1, Chapter 6

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1 Chapter 5

Spinoza

Now, nearly six months later, very little seemed to have changed when I boarded a train for Southampton, the first leg of my journey to America.

“You needn’t come with me,” I told my parents, who hadn’t listened.

“Why don’t you humor us, Rita dear? After all, it’s not as if we’re dropping you off at school. You’ll be gone for several months, maybe longer.”

My father’s voice had a slightly ironic, theatrical quality that must have been quite useful in the courtroom. It was the one thing he seemed to have in common with Uncle J. And perhaps that explained how my father, whose devotion to Spinoza, hard facts, and the rule of law, could maintain a lasting friendship with a man whose life was wedded to the make-believe.

His love of Spinoza had begun at university, where he found something of himself in the philosopher’s distinction between “adequate” and “inadequate” ideas. He fell in love with Spinoza’s belief in the indomitable primacy of reason and had taken up the principle like a religious vocation. Reason became the engine of his success, the sharp edge of his incisive arguments in court.

Unfortunately, he’d been unable to set aside Spinoza in his personal dealings. I’ve long felt that beneath his charming, statesmanlike demeanor, he looked down on anyone too strongly influenced by “inadequate ideas,” which Spinoza identified as emotion or intuition. In other words, inadequate people—like my mother and me. He never came right out and said this, but it seemed to hover always in the background, masked by his keen intelligence and personal magnetism.

And yet, there had never been one day in my life that I did not worship him.

“But it’s you two I’m worried about,” I told them as we queued up to board the train.

My father still wore his Hamburg like a statesman and kept his graying mustache as trimmed as when I was a child. But lately, his powerful voice, which had always reminded me of the gong at the start of a Rank film, had become phlegmy. It was beginning to sound like someone singing through a papered comb.

My mother, to whom I owe my rawboned physique and a fondness for language, now looked less like the leggy tennis player of her flapper-girl photographs and more like a fallen soufflé.

She wore a voluminous tweed suit and lavender blouse with a single strand of pearls draped elegantly round her neck. All her girlishness gone, she was now what’s known as a handsome woman. Self-sufficient and proud. But I worried about her more than my father. And I suppose that’s because I too thought her inadequate in some way. Though keen to put a good face on their marriage, as perhaps all couples do, something had been amiss in theirs for a long time.

End of Part 1, Chapter 5

@2021 Andrew Jazprose Hill

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1, Chapter 4

The Pied Piper

In sharp contrast to the bright spot of sunshine we’d seen outside Victory Arch, the steamy air inside Waterloo Station that day was dismal. It smelled of carbon, wet dirt and metal. A swell of voices roared over the squeal of brakes. Rail cars being hitched together at the last minute clanged like church bells.

I took Ian’s arm more as a matter of ownership than affection. But tried not to cling too tightly. What I hoped was that he’d feel my body next to his and be reminded that we were still basically newlyweds. I wasn’t hoping that he’d throw me down on the platform and make passionate love to me in front of God and everyone. But I did hope he’d apologize before getting on that train. Because I wasn’t going to.

We threaded through a platform crammed with soldiers. It looked as if entire hospital wards had been dumped there too. We saw bandaged patients and the white-haired elderly pushed along in wheel chairs. Two leashed dogs trotted behind their owners, sniffing at the stained concrete for whatever it is animals find interesting there.

Hundreds of flushed-faced boys and girls with scuffed shoes and knees to match chattered away as if heading to a picnic. One of the boys stole a kiss from a nearby girl, a cute little blonde who slapped him handily. Another boy had his wrist tied to a smaller, younger fellow who must have been his brother. I half expected the lot of them to throw off their school caps at any moment, sending their adult supervisors into fits of insanity. Each child bore an identifying lapel tag, and I knew without inspecting their cardboard kits that each contained a government-issued gas mask. Operation Pied Piper, which I’d been reading about in the newspapers, had begun.

Except for the soldiers and a small legion of porters shoving baggage carts along the crowded platform, all were London refugees fleeing Hitler’s imminent attack on our homeland.

END OF PART 1, Chapter 4

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1, Chapter 3

The Kiss

We had dinner and went dancing the night before he shipped out. Just as we were leaving, a full-bosomed red-lipped blonde threw her arms around him, planting a big wet kiss right on his mouth.

“Kill a Jerry for me, won’t you, luv?”

She looked at me cooly as if seeing me for the first time, then said: “Gotta share the wealth, dearie. No harm meant.”

I don’t think of myself as particularly insecure. But I’ve always felt undesirably flat-chested when pitted against a woman whose breasts torpedo half-naked into a room. Ian had never complained about my body. And yet, there was something invasive, almost Hitlerian, about the blonde’s cleavage, which seemed to give her unfair advantage. I felt like Poland—outgunned.

Ian, of course, didn’t mind her at all. He even produced a match to light her cigarette. The prolonged encounter stretched my nerves almost to the breaking point. But I held my tongue, loosening it only when we reached home.

“What’s happened to you, Ian? You’re behaving like an imbecile.”

“And you’re acting like a jealous old cow,” he said. “Why the hell don’t you grow up? Don’t you realize that I’ll be risking my life out there every single day?”

I wanted to say, “Yes, darling, I do realize that. And I’m deliriously proud of you for being so brave and smart and handsome. I don’t want you to risk your life, and if there were any way I could go fight Hitler in your place—or at least alongside you—I would drop everything and go with you.”

But I didn’t say that. What I said instead was:

“And don’t you realize that you’re a married man? Or doesn’t that mean anything to you anymore?”

After that, I said some other things I shouldn’t have. Then went up to our room and slammed the door. We’d had a few other skirmishes during these first few months together. Whenever I retreated to the bedroom in tears, he eventually came after me. But on this night, I listened for his knock, and it never came. He spent the rest of the night on the sofa downstairs. I cried myself to sleep.

The next morning, we did one more terrible thing. We went through the motions of normalcy as if the previous night hadn’t happened at all. I poached his egg, then made his tea and toast, muttering only such words as were necessary to get us through the ritual of breakfast. The chill wind between us showed no sign of warming. Neither of us apologized. We just carried on, saying little, hailing a taxi outside our flat like an aging, long-married couple chained together by habit.

End of Part I, Chapter 3

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1, Chapter 2

Waterloo

The last time I’d set foot inside Waterloo Station was the day Ian left. I remember stepping out of the taxi and looking up while he paid the fare. The day was gray and dull, matching my mood. We’d just begun the ste climb through Victory Arch when I noticed the sun breaking through the clouds like a red-capped swimmer bobbing to the surface of a gray sea.

I took it as a good omen. A sign that Ian was right about the war. That it would be over in a few months. That he’d be back home soon. And we’d get on with our life together the way it had been in the beginning, when everything seemed bright and beautiful. Not the way things had ended the night before.

Ever since he’d been accepted into the Royal Air Force, he’d been behaving badly. The blue uniform and silver wings that set him apart as one of “The Few” revealed irksome aspects of his personality, which were quite new to me.

I first noticed the change when we joined three other couples at the pub one night. All the other men were unmarried pilots on dates with attractive women who were pretty in ways that I am not. I like to think I’m reasonably attractive, but I’ve never wanted to be judged by my looks alone. And until Ian joined the RAF, I hadn’t felt a need to arch my eyebrows with a pencil or vamp it up with elaborate pomps, rolls, or curls. I was Rita Alexander. Not Rita Hayworth, and I didn’t want to be.

Ian and his friends had become pretty cocky after earning their wings. They called themselves The Four Horsemen, bragging that they’d descend on Hitler like the mythic punishers in the Bible. I understood the need to psych themselves up. But in the midst of this pre-battle bravado, one of these “horsemen”—Neil Sommers—made a particularly offensive remark.

“I hear the ministry plans to remove the color bar,” he said. “Don’t know why they think a bunch of lazy Black blokes from the Caribbean can be of any use to us. We’ve already got one Nigger. That ought to be enough. He belongs to one of the Wing Commanders.“

“What?”

“That’s what he calls his dog,” Sommers laughed.

He looked too chunky to be a pilot, thick-necked with hair that fell over his brow like blond bangs. He had beady blue eyes and ears that seemed too small for his head. I didn’t like him.

“It’s a Black Lab,” he said, sounding as if he’d just pulled a rabbit from a hat. “They’re training it as a sniffer. I’d wager a month’s pay that dog will help us a lot more than the niggers they’re bringing over from Jamaica. Can’t imagine any getting into the RAF, though, even if they do lower the color bar. Most likely wind up as brown jobs or wingless wonders.”

The other women tittered. They’d been clinging to the men’s arms or draping themselves around their necks all night. But I didn’t like the comment. My mother had been passionate in her support of The League of Coloured Peoples. At first, I wrote this off as another of her suffragette-like crusades. But after I heard the league’s founder deliver a blistering speech at Cambridge, I became intolerant of our national indifference to the Black man’s cause.

“What are brown jobs and wingless wonders?” I asked.

Sommers blew the head off his beer and laughed. “They’re our inferiors,” he said, lifting a pinky and pointing his nose in the air.

Finally, Ian said:

“Brown jobs are what we call army blokes, Rita. It’s because of their khaki uniforms. Wingless wonder is really an affectionate term. It’s how we refer to the ground crews. They can’t fly, but they make sure our planes do.”

I was glad to be let in on the jargon, but learning these terms did not erase the unpleasantness of Sommers’s remark, which lingered over us like the smell of rotten eggs.

I worried that Ian had become close friends with a creep like that. But It would have been easier to forget that night if I hadn’t noticed other changes after he received his wings. He took to preening before the mirror, more obsessed with his hair than I’d ever been with mine. Failing to grasp that it was not a compliment, he loved learning that pilots were known as “Glamour Boys.”

Women threw themselves at him, and he gloried in it. But I didn’t mind that so much. After all, I was his wife. Surely, some of that was to be expected. What really got my knickers twisted was when he encouraged it, openly flirting with other women in my presence. I’d always heard that clothes make the man. But was it possible that a uniform could change him?

End of Part I, Chapter 2

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

PART I, Chapter 1

Summons

That morning, a hard rain like someone knocking on the door roused me from a harrowing dream.

In it, I’d been walking alone through a dark house—trespassing, more or less, without intending to. How I got there was a mystery, but I felt innocent of any wrongdoing. I suppose a sense of privilege propelled me. I felt as entitled to my intrusion as that explorer whose recent burial excavations in Egypt had been reported with much fanfare in the press. Giving no thought to the dead and how they might feel about my presence, I wondered if I too might find gold in this dark place.

I hadn’t gone very far when an old man, bandaged like a mummy, began to creep along behind me. Pretending nonchalance, I began to walk faster. But I knew he was near even when I didn’t turn to look. A rank, medicinal smell emanated from his body, which I took to be embalming fluid. When I was no longer able to contain my fear, I started to run.

I ran past cavernous yellow-mouthed fireplaces and rows of armless white statues, women mostly, with uncovered breasts that made me feel all the more exposed. But I didn’t have time to explore my own insecurities. The old man was like a dog—teeth bared, nipping at my heels, gaining on me at every turn.

When I looked over my shoulder again, he was very close. His long bandaged arm reached for my neck, and I opened my mouth to scream. But I could hear only the thumping rain and my heaving breath.

I woke up.

The rain that morning struck the house like a faucet turned sideways, and I felt as if the whole world were closing in on me. Instinctively, I reached across the bed to touch the tangle of red hair on Ian’s chest. But his pillow was cold. I got dressed and made a pot of tea.

Downstairs, I sat in the jutting bay window trying to collect myself. A small black-and-white dog scampered across the street, its fur wet and matted with rainwater. I drank my tea and watched the dog huddle beneath a green wheelbarrow used as a planter by our neighbor. The rain grew persistent, striking the window in slanting silver needles.

This was weather the cuckoo likes. That’s what my father would say, standing with thumbs in his vest pocket, addressing some imagined jury in the clouds. I never took to Thomas Hardy the way he did, but the opening line of the old poem seemed to fit my mood that morning. Despite the tea, I was still feeling a bit cuckoo myself. The dream had shaken me.

The sinister old man seemed to gain on me even as I sat wide awake in my own house, trying to pretend a cup of Earl Grey might set me right. But the dream was only half of what troubled me that day. What bothered me even more was the way I’d left things with Ian.

It was a late spring morning with signs of clearing in the distance. The chilly, prickling rain seemed to permeate the glass. I looked up to inspect the ceiling. But my sense of seepage was just the trick water sometimes plays on the ear. The roof was fine, apparently. It was my marriage that had sprung a leak.

The view from this side of the house offered no trees, just a river of wet concrete and long rows of yellow daffodils bearing up bravely beneath the flat white houses across the street. I suppose Hardy’s chestnut spikes were tumbling to earth somewhere. But I couldn’t see any.

What I could see from my window-seat was the drenched cap of a delivery man. His head, bent low against the light rain, sank into the raised collar of his coat. A leather strap across his chest glistened in the gray light as did the brown satchel at his side. This was not at all the sort of person the wife of an RAF pilot wants to see after her husband has flown off to fight Hitler.

The strong wind that had been pushing the rain sideways all morning shoved me back into the foyer a little when I opened the front door. Surprised, the postman widened his eyes as if I had just sprouted wings. He had the cherry-cheeked face of a boy and spoke with a pronounced East End accent.

“Good day, ma’am,” he said, handing me a yellow envelope and thanking me for the tip. His voice had the pitch of a soprano, and for a moment I thought he might be a girl. So many men had already shipped out.

I slid a fingernail beneath the envelope’s flap and tried to steel myself against the worst. Across the foyer, the gilt-edged mirror my parents had given us as a wedding present stared back at me. It framed a pale, dark-haired woman, eyes half-closed, her narrow back against the paneled door, trying to keep the stiff upper lip we English are known for.

I didn’t know exactly where Ian was. But I knew he hadn’t flown to America. The cable was from my father’s old university friend who had been living across the pond now for several years. I could almost hear his voice as I read it.

Rita: Your services urgently needed for hush-hush assignment in the U.S. Princely compensation. All expenses paid. I’ve contacted Mrs. Reid at your agency. Decision entirely up to you. Please reply at once. Travel and other details to follow.—Uncle J.

The rain continued its relentless assault against the house. But all I could hear was the hammering of an anvil inside my chest.

END OF PART 1, Chapter 1

Thanks for reading/listening

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Welcome to The Jazprose Diaries!

In this first episode, you’ll meet Andrew Jazprose Hill—that’s me! Today, I’ll tell you about something really powerful that happened to me back when I worked as a TV newscaster in San Francisco. And how that changed my life forever. I’ll also tell you about my soon-to-be-released novella called Amanuensis, about a young woman who flees England to escape World War II, but finds herself unable to escape herself or the future she was afraid of. I’m looking forward to sharing this podcast with you and engaging with your comments in the days ahead. Thanks for checking out The Jazprose Diaries!

Once upon a time…

While I was working in television news, I had a life-changing experience. I was covering one of those “stories of the century,” which seemed so important at the time. Like most of my colleagues, I worked really hard every day to bring viewers the “latest.” The next day, I’d get up and do the same thing all over again. I believed the work was important. Because the public had a right to know. I felt privileged to be part of that process. Also, I was paid really well.

And then one day, I stepped back and looked around at all this scurrying about. In that moment, I saw everything as if in slow motion. I was not on drugs, and I was not drunk. I was more sober than at any time in my life. And I felt that I was seeing clearly for the first time.

Aristotle called this peripeteia.

The moment when the protagonist realizes that everything he’s believed up to that point is wrong. James Joyce called it an epiphany, a moment of illumination. Playwright Eugene O’Neill once referred to it as a lifting of the veil. And yes, I know these later writers meant something a little different from Aristotle.

The thing about having a moment like this, by whatever name it’s called, is that it presents you with a choice. You can drive off in your Mercedes and pretend it never happened. Or you can face it and follow its truth wherever that leads.

In my personal peripeteia, I understood that the news we were all working on so hard would mean nothing in a day or two. The printed versions would wind up as fish-wrap or be used to house-train a new puppy. The broadcast versions would disappear into thin air like smoke up the chimney or those visions conjured by Prospero at the end of The Tempest. You know the line: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little world is rounded with a sleep.”

In Aristotle’s peripeteia, recognition ushers in reversal.

Oedipus blinds himself and wanders into exile after learning that he’s murdered his father and married his own mother. That his children are also his siblings. Fortunately, nothing so dramatic happened to me. In my peripeteia, I simply hit the brakes and did a U-turn.

I resigned from television news and set sail for a place where the stories I worked on might last a little longer than the 6 o’clock news. The destination I had in mind was literature, which Ezra Pound famously described as “news that stays news.” Traveling in uncharted waters, I soon learned that the distance between the shore I started from and the one I hoped to reach was an ocean.

After years of navigating the estuaries of day-jobs and the eddies of freelance journalism—scratching out a few middling books along the way, I returned to graduate school to study creative writing, received a fellowship, and even won first prize for one of my short stories in a nationally recognized fiction competition.

But this is not the place to go into the details of my journey.

That’s for my diaries to tell. For now, I only want to give you an idea of how I got here. And why I hope you’ll find something of interest in The Jazprose Diaries, my new publication on Substack, a cutting-edge subscription service that directly connects readers with writers they're interested in.

The Jazprose Diaries is part of my ongoing effort to write fiction and essays that linger a while. To connect with you in the place that matters. Where your heart is not all that different from my heart. And the things that separate us diminish beneath the sweep of what we have in common.

You’re receiving this email because…

You subscribe to my blog or have already signed up for news about my upcoming books. And because I want to let you know, I’ll soon be publishing a short novel called Amanuensisas a serial in The Jazprose Diaries.

As a free subscriber, you’ll automatically receive Part One of Amanuensis in seven daily installments when it’s ready for publication.

Each installment has a reading time of 2-to-5 minutes. There are 36 installments in all. After the initial seven days, the installments will stop. If you’d like to continue reading the novella, just sign up for a paid subscription at $5 per month, or $30 per year.

No worries if a paid subscription is not for you.

There will always be plenty of free weekly content in The Jazprose Diaries and in the subsection (or Substack) called “Short Takes,” where you’ll find my short stories as I publish them. Unsubscribe at any time. We’ll still be friends in the morning.

The old is new again.

Did you know that most people spend 15 minutes a day reading a book and 3 hours streaming movies? That’s the way things are now. It’s how we live these days. Fortunately, the Substack platform provides a way to fit books into our new way of living—one chapter or essay at a time. For instance, one installment of my novel takes less time to read than a scroll through your Instagram feed.

Earlier, I described Substack as cutting-edge. But serialization is nothing new. Many famous books were published this way, including The Count of Monte Cristo, A Tale of Two Cities, Phantom of the Opera, War of the Worlds, Madame Bovary, Ulysses, and In Cold Blood. Long before Tales of the City became a Netflix TV series, it was a daily newspaper series in the San Francisco Chronicle.

I'm especially excited to be able to interact with you as the chapters appear.

I want to hear from you. Armistead Maupin had already written a big chunk from Tales of the City before learning from a reader that the name of his famously transgender character Anna Madrigal is an anagram for "A man and a girl." Maupin later included the anagram in his story. I'll be listening for your ideas in the same way.

I don’t understand how algorhithms work.

But I do know that when you hit the LIKE, COMMENT, or SHARE buttons that appear at the top of my stories, you help other readers find me. Today’s world is all about engagement. So let’s engage!

It’s an honor to be able to share my stories with you. I hope you’ll stick around for awhile.

Thank you!

Andrew

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/subscribe

The Jazprose Diaries: Recent Episodes

Andrew Jazprose Hill