Weiner’s Tweets, Eliot’s Tarts, Truman’s Bomb

When God, in his wisdom, dictated the first chapter of the Hebrew Bible he describes in some detail how he created all the stuff in the universe. The sky, the sea, the animals, day and night; after each he declared “and it was so” and/or “it was good”. But when he got to the creation of man, he either intentionally or by accident left out the phrase “and it was good” which set off a chain of events for which it appears we are still paying dearly.

I thought about that the other day I when read that Anthony Weiner, that brilliant former New York congressman is now the front runner in the race for Mayor of New York City. He’s the fellow who allegedly took a picture of his crotch encased in his tight jockey-type underpants, and then put it out on Twitter for the world l to see.

Let us call it God endowed Human Nature run amuck.

And almost too good to be true, Eliot Spitzer, defamed New York Governor, has announced he is running for office in New York City. He was discovered to have been much too personally involved with a house of ill repute.

And then there’s that financial genius, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, touted to be the next President of France, and called in the media “the most intelligent man in France.” He was caught running around his luxury New York hotel room naked, chasing a 32-year-old West African chamber maid demanding sexual satisfaction.

One can only conclude that God is apparently still frantically but unsuccessfully struggling to repeal his initial error.

He, of course, knew he had a problem when he created the first man and then the first woman from his rib. The first guy did not need to chase her around the room. Or send a tweet. He simply tempted her and she fell into his arms.

 

With the exception of the great flood, there was a relatively quiet period for the next 400 years, while the Israelites were busy advising the pharaoh on economic matters, designing and then constructing the pyramids. But when the people of Israel began losing those top government jobs they left Egypt and began trekking eastward across the North African desert. Without pyramids to build and pharaohs to advise they got out of hand and started worshiping a calf made out of highest quality gold.

Alarmed about his obvious loss in popularity, God told his spokesperson (Moses) to go up the nearest mountain and come down with his ten amendments, as you might call them. To this day Israelites all over the world mark the anniversary of that event with a holiday called “Shavuot” celebrated in the spring.

It is not clear whether the amendments really changed anything.  The jury is still out.

As we still struggle with war and brutality in far off lands once occupied by those same Israelites, it is difficult pour over history and find much positive spin.

A new book, for example, tells us that Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. Lincoln, we are told, either ordered or permitted young boys who deserted the army to be hung after being forced to sit on their own coffin for a day, before their terrible premature deaths. 

Darwin, whose father in law was a minister, fearing he had defied God’s word, waited years until he published the book that changed the way we look at history.

Another new book called Final Jeopardy, describes how some of the great technological minds at IBM spent years to create a robot-like device called “Watson” to outsmart the human brain, which managed to beat some of the best.

Mother Nature, in all her majesty, has not fared much better. In her pristine forms she is magnificent. Enough to move great writers and painters to replicate nature’s wondrous beauty. It seems we couldn’t leave well enough alone and thought we could conquer those forces which brought the earth to life.

We raped the forests, poisoned our rivers and our air in the name of progress.  We even tampered with the atom, the stuff of which nature is made. 

One of God’s own Israelites, Albert Einstein, found a way mathematically to tear the Atom, the fundamental substance of nature, apart. Others labored in the hills of New Mexico, to create mankind’s most devastating weapon, using the Einstein equation as its basis. Their monster was capable of killing or horribly burning hundreds of thousands of human beings at a time.

When the time came to use it, President Truman told the world that he “never lost a night’s sleep” over the decision. But, to his everlasting credit, we know for sure that he never knew that it led to the incineration of 200,000 innocent Japanese.  But one thing is certain; he never would have twittered an amorous message to anyone. Never.

Nor, as far as we know, did he ever chase a chamber maid around a hotel room. Or hire a call girl.  Probably because his lovely wife Bess would have hit him on the head with a broomstick.

He did, history records, call Paul Hume, the music critic of the Washington Post, a “son of a bitch”, for criticizing his daughter Margaret’s performance at the piano.  That’s as good, or bad as it gets.

    

God help us!