Nobody Insults a Harvard Man

Nobody’s Opinion: Last night, god knows why, I insulted a man of a great many degrees, many distinctions, and the son of a father, who as serving as a doctor in Dresden in WWII, was a man of great courage.

This man is an author of great renown, a great lawyer, and a fighter for truth and the International way of Harvard and Time.

No, it’s not John Grisham…

I didn’t mean to insult the man, honest. It was just a simple question. I just couldn’t help myself. I mean after all, I’m just a nobody with no degrees or honors to my name. And unless the moon turns plaid, or I win the Powerball lottery, I will die that way.

What’s worse is I embarrassed my friend Ramonda, (named after a flower) who I actually drove to the event.

It’s hard to describe Ramonda: you almost have to experience her. She is what in most people would call a “real pip.” She used to be a groupie of Elvis. Now, she is in love with authors. She would probably swoon and die at the feet of Stephen King if she ever got to see him live, and when she found out that Scott Turow was going to be speaking at our local library, she went out and died her hair, painted her nails, bought an expensive black velvet jump suit, and laid on the floor to put on her makeup so that her face would looked “relaxed.”

This trick, she informed me, was one she learned from Julia Roberts, the “Pretty Woman.” Who was I to tell her that, after the age of sixty, your face needs no help in that endeavor?

When we got there, there was a rope dividing the room into two groups. Of course, we weren’t allowed on the side reserved for his friends and family. What I did notice is that when the room filled up, most of the people looked rich, even the ones on our side. The only person who I could identify with was Ridley Pearson, (another author) who is rich, but has the soul of an angel.

He was there to introduce Mr. Turow, and to inform us that Mr. Turow actually plays with the Rockbottom Remainders…a band which consists of Stephen King, Dave Berry, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, and some others. The band is actually a very good band, and they put on a great night of entertainment. Evidently Mr. Turow does a mean imitation of a transvestite singing, “Wild Thing,” something that almost every nobody in the world can do….and lawyers are especially good at it. Trust me, I ran a karaoke bar once.

Actually, by the looks of him, I was having a hard time imagining it.

Most of you would know this man by the hit movie, which was based on his book, “Presumed Innocent.” It stared Harrison Ford. I had to admit, I had never read a book by him, but do remember liking the movie.

I use to see all of Harrison Ford’s before he started saying nasty things about President Bush.
(You know, if movies stars would just be a little less nasty about their opinions, we might be able to go back to their movies.)

Anyway, Ramonda was so aghast that I had not even read one of his books, that I went into her bag at her feet, which weighed about 70 pounds, and grabbed one. I started feeling sorry for the poor famous author, because I carried the sucker in.

This is another reason to love Ramonda. She is a collector. She has enough first editions of books, and enough rare photos’s of Elvis, that she and her husband could be living in Hawaii right now, instead of the poor, small, run-down house she lives in now.

But, she just holds onto it all…it’s for her daughter she says---to sell.

“Do you have a will, Ramonda?”

“No.”

See, I told you…a real pip

But…I’m off the story. Ridley Pearson got up to introduce the man, and he is getting so good at speaking, that it’s a real joy just to go to his book signings. Ridley is a first-rate author…certainly better than John Grisham. And a great bass player.

So, while we were sitting there, I opened a few of Scott’s books. I was looking for some paragraph, a moving or original sentence, something profound to give me some insight.

I couldn’t find anything.

I was thinking “Well, I guess you have to read the whole thing.”

And then, Scott started talking. He talked for over an hour about…appellate courts.

Not exactly a riveting subject. He really needed to drag out the boa. His idea was that appellate courts are where the REAL laws are made, places that excite him. Although I had no reason whatsoever to doubt him, not falling asleep was getting hard. In fact, I counted three men who actually didn’t care if anyone saw them sleeping.

And then came the questions from the crowd. The questions were very simple, but it seemed this is where Scott finally woke up.

He took one question and talked about how the generation that fought WWII did not want to talk about all the gruesome things that had happened to them and what they had witnessed during the war. This bothered him because his own father had given him no such conversation. It also bothered him, that there was so much jingoism going on at the time.

Another thing that bothered him, is that while he was trapped in an airport for over 27 hours, he ended up talking to a soldier who believed in what he was doing in Iraq, where as Scott has always been against the war. Although he admitted that men in war had to believe in fighting for the country.

It was as if he was confused and talking to himself in his own mind, and we were just listening. I could now lean back in my chair.

Then out of the blue, he said. “The Supreme Court voted in the 2000 election, and they voted the same way they would have voted in the booth.”

What?

That’s the sentenced that floored me.

Well, I thought…Of COURSE THEY DID! Isn’t that what they all do now? What kind of absurd statement, coming from a Harvard lawyer, is that?

Yes, Scott Torow was still upset that George Bush won the election by Supreme Court.

He went on and talked about other things…how so many innocent men are on death row: how blacks are mistreated in the courtrooms by whites.

He talked about how he wrote for Time Magazine and how they wouldn’t let him use the word “ass.” He talked about Harvard. He was very proud to be a part of them both, despite the fact that he was deprived of great words and more words because of advertising space.

Actually, he had some good points.

Still, while he rambled on, I couldn’t get that statement out of my head. It seemed blatantly absurd.

As I remember, the Florida recount came down to Al Gore NOT accepting the results, and all the recounting got SO ridiculous, not even mentioning how the soldiers votes from overseas were not counted, (putting more for Bush) and Florida prisoners were allowed to count,(putting more to Gore) and all the districts were actually manned by Democrats NOT Republicans… and finally the Florida Supreme Court which voted down strictly party democratic lines did some illegal maneuvers, and it was actually Katherine Harris that came in and saved the day by actually following the LAW…which she was later screwed by the very BUSHES that she helped put into office. (go figure)

The Supreme Court just voted to stop the recounting.

And this nobody remembers thinking at the time, that---HEY…the whole idea of checks and balances really does works…it was a proud moment and a moment of nobody awe that EVEN after all the corruption and fighting that went on in Florida, the Supreme Court decided to end it all, and it just so happened at that moment in time, there was one more conservative vote to give it to George Bush.

That’s how a Republic is supposed to work. Those founders, even though they couldn’t even have foreseen anything like this, had put enough checks and balances into a system that sooner or later, justice can sometimes win.

That was going through my head.

So, while Scott was signing all of Ramonda’s books, (all twenty-five of them) I told Mr. Turow that I didn’t understand what he meant about voting party lines.

“Isn’t that exactly what the Florida Supreme Court did, also?” I asked him.

“Isn’t that what they all do?” I threw in for good measure.

Oh boy. This guy’s face turned to utter disgust. The frown went so deep, that I could have planted a potato head into it. He looked like he wanted to spit.

Oops.

Then he said. “I don’t think the founders wanted the Supreme Court to decide a President.”

Well, of course they didn’t. But that does not mean that his statement was still not absurd.

To which I SHOULD have replied, “The founders did not intend for the Supreme Court to actually establish laws, like roe VS wade, or affirmative action…judges were meant to only rule and interprete existining laws. The founders did not want the Supreme Court to use international laws as opinions for argument, or make any laws at all for that matter, that’s for Congress.”

But I didn’t. The man was so obviously infuriated that when I asked him another question, he would not even look at me, or answer me, but very rudely ignored me.

Gosh, I felt bad…I had insulted one of Ramonda’s favorite authors. Who by all accounts, was a nice man, just raised in the echelons of the elite Harvard babies and rulers of the world. In his world, he is probably a god.

And when a god has to mingle with the nobody’s of the world, it’s rough.

When I told Ramonda about my blunder, she wasn’t even mad. She was thinking about her next authors meeting.

On the way home, to try to rationalize my remorseful guilty conscience, I remembered this man has probably spent many a night in some hotel bar with Harrison Ford complaining about the Bush Presidency and all the red-neck ignorant populous nobody’s that the world would be better off without.

And that my little nobody remark, probably upset him more than all the elite critics in the Washington Post.

He has probably never had a bad review in his life.

So okay, he was due.

So, I came to the conclusion that if you have to insult someone, it might as well be a Harvard man. If he had been a professor at the local community college, I might have felt a lot worse. And after all, they rule the world…no harm done.

Nobody’s Perfect: Okay, I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have actually bought one of his books. I went to McDonalds instead.

Nobody Knows: The puzzle here, to many conservatives is, why in the world do liberals get so emotionally upset at any contradictions to their beliefs? Why can’t they see that all people are different, all people have different experiences in life which form their opinions, and unless you are talking to a child molester, tyrant, or murderer, getting full of hatred for the people who you think are stupid, is stupid in itself.

It actually puts you on a lower level to them, well, that’s my nobody opinion.

Nobody Cares: Ridley says Scott wrote a marvelous book. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which one he said it was which means I might have to read them all.