ideofact

Fox and Friend, 2

A while back, I noted the oddity of muckraker Upton Sinclair taking up his pen in the service of William Fox, who from 1915 to 1930 ran what was arguably the most influential motion picture company, the Fox Film Corporation (which survives to this day as Twentieth Century Fox). William Fox was an ardent Republican, supported Herbert Hoover's 1928 election campaign through his Fox Movietone Films and -- wait for it -- his Fox News division, produced patriotic films during World War One, and ran a company worth (Sinclair tells us) some $300 million. From Alibris I ordered a copy of Sinclair's book, Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox shortly thereafter; the book arrived last week. In the interim, I fished around for information on the book, and came across, via Nexis, an August 31, 2003, column by Tim Rutten that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Rutten wrote:

THERE is no better evidence of that -- and no stronger refutation of the liberal Hollywood myth -- than the movie industry's most decisive intervention ever into California politics.

In 1934, the muckraking novelist, socialist tract writer and dietary crank Upton Sinclair stunned the state by winning the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. His platform called for adopting a modest universal old-age pension and seizing idle factories and farmlands so that they could be handed over to cooperatives of the unemployed. Sinclair was favored to win the general election, and that prospect rattled the California establishment to its marrow.

Among those most alarmed were the mostly Republican, mostly Jewish founding fathers of the film industry.

The year before he won the nomination, Sinclair had published a book, "Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox," based on a series of interviews he had conducted with the recently deposed Fox Studios founder. The book, as historian Kevin Starr points out, was "an anti-Semitic document in which Jewish villains were everywhere. Ostensibly, an expose of Hollywood and Wall Street, the Fox memoir had a strong secondary theme as well: Hollywood as the Cosa Nostra of American Jewry."

I was rather surprised to read this -- Sinclair may have been many things (he was a bit of a crank when it came to diet, and it was rather disturbing to read in the Fox book that only the Soviet Union enjoyed freedom from "wage slavery"), but he was no anti-Semite (his books were among those burnt by the Nazis). So when the Fox book arrived last week, I read it with interest, and can say that Kevin Starr's characterization is wildly inaccurate.

Hollywood is hardly mentioned in the book. Instead, Sinclair focuses on Fox's dealing with the New York and Chicago financiers who, Fox and Sinclair believed, tried to ruin the producer and his companies. The only time Sinclair raises Fox's Judaism (and that of a few other Hollywood moguls) is to ask whether Fox thought that anti-Semitism played any role in the shabby treatment Fox alleged he received from his bankers. (Fox says the thought had crossed his mind, but doubted it). The villains are largely Anglo-Saxons, but Sinclair couldn't care less -- his enemy is capital, and that's where he trains his fire, and had the heads of Chase and Chemical and other banks been Zulus, Sinclair wouldn't have had any less ire for them.

Miscellany

I'm a little more scatterbrained than usual. So here's some nonsensical notes strung together:

Thanks to Ghost of a Flea for pointing out the new animated Batman series -- it made the five year old's day (and yes, the theme music really does sound like the Cure...)

Among the pile of books to get through is Anthony Burgess' But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? Homage to QWERT YUIOP and other writings, a collection of his journalism, reviews, essays, and what not. I've been paging through it, and came across an interesting piece on a book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, one of many works which argues that the Merovingian kings were descendants of the offspring of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Burgess is fairly dismissive of the work -- the three believe that among the many grand masters of the secret society Prieure de Sion, which aims to restore the Merovingian line to power, was none other than Jean Cocteau, whom Burgess dismisses as a "Drugtaker pederast, minor poet, collaborator -- what has he to do with the blood Christ?" I think that's a little harsh on Cocteau, who was certainly gay but not, to the best of my knowledge, a pederast or, for that matter, a collaborator with the Nazis, but still -- Cocteau's inclusion among the grand masters strikes me as being utterly absurd.

Brian Ulrich has been watching Fox News with mixed results.

Stygius has thoughts on the psychology of Jihad that remind me of something I read in Political Islam by Nazih N. Ayubi. Ayubi gives us some statistics resulting from the consequences of urbanization: just as in the West, the age at which Arabs marry in urban environments (where one needs additional schooling, where the cost of living is higher, and so on and so forth) has increased steadily -- in some cases approaching the age of 30 for men. In the West, we've compensated more or less for this by allowing a loosening of sexual mores, but the same has not occurred in the Arab world. Add to this the Muslim view of sex -- while Christianity has generally branded it as something shameful, in Islam it's one of the pleasures of Heaven (I'm actually paraphrasing Ayubi here) -- and combine that with that hint of "late-adolescent narcissism that makes violent jihad appeal to both the young man's need for an affirmation (of potency) while having this symbolic, transcendent altruism-through-expressive act at the same time; self-destructiveness as the height of self-obsession" that Stygius speaks of, and I think one can begin to get a sense of the psychological drive behind this.

In another essay on Christography, Burgess mentions a name I must have missed -- Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera -- allegedly the father of Jesus (Burgess adds, parenthetically, that this was a belief the Nazis held, since it half-Aryanized the savior).

Kesher Talk has lots of links on the mise en scene in New York -- should be fun to follow for the rest of the week.

Covers

I've got to start taking the five year old with me on my Borders excursions more often. Today he plucked from the shelves a book I'd been interested in for some time but never run across -- Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem, which, contra Amazon, is back in print, issued by George Braziller in a handsome little volume that retails for $12.95. The five year old was attracted by the cover illustration, showing a trio of witches receiving images from the devil, but I was more interested in its contents. Hansen's interesting thesis, which I outlined in that earlier post, runs as follows:

The traditional interpretation of what happened at Salem is as much the product of casual journalism and imaginative literature as it is of historical scholarship. It might be summarized as follows: (1) no witchcraft was practiced in Massachusetts; (2) the behavior of the "afflicted" persons, including their convulsive fits, was fraudulent and designed chiefly to call attention to themselves; (3) the afflicted persons were inspired, stimulated, and encouraged by the clergy (especially Cotton Mather), who used the fear of witchcraft as a means of bolstering their flagging power in the community; (4) the clergy whipped the general populace into a state of "mass hysteria" with their sermons and writings on witchcraft; (5) the only significant opposition to the proceedings at Salem came from the merchant class, specifically from Thomas Brattle and Robert Calef; and (6) the executions were unique in Western civilization, and therefore monstrous, and attributable to some narrowness or fanaticism or repressiveness peculiar to Puritans.

Yet the facts are quite contrary to these common assumptions. To begin with, witchcraft actually did exist and was widely practiced in seventeenth-century New England, as it was in Europe at that time (and still is, for that matter, among the unlearned majority of mankind). It worked then as it works now in witchcraft societies like those of the West Indies, through psychogenic rather than occult means, commonly producing hysterical symptoms as a result of the victim's fear, and sometimes, when fear was succeeded by a profound sense of hopelessness, even producing death.

The behavior of the afflicted persons was not fraudulent but pathological. They were hysterics, and in the clinical rather than the popular sense of that term. These people were not merely overexcited; they were mentally ill. Furthermore, they were ill long before any clergyman got to them.

The general populace did reach that state of public excitement inaccurately called "mass hysteria," but this was due to the popular fear of witchcraft rather than to the preachings of the clergy. The public excitement continued well after the leadership, both clerical and secular, had called a halt to the witchcraft proceedings. In fact the clergy were, from beginning to end, the chief opponents of the events at Salem. In particular, Cotton Mather was anything but the wild-eyed fanatic of tradition. Throughout most of the proceedings he was a model of restraint and caution, and at one point he went further than any of his colleagues dared to go in proposing a method to protect the innocent.

The writings of Brattle and Calef came too late to have any significant influence on the course of events in Massachusetts.

Finally, the executions at Salem were by no means unique. Belief in witchcraft was quite as common among seventeenth-century Anglicans, Quakers, Lutherans, and Catholics as it was among Puritans. Executions for witchcraft reached their height in Western civilization during the seventeenth century and continued in Europe until the end of the following century, more than a hundred years after the outbreak of Salem.

I'm looking forward to reading it the rest.

I also picked up an incredibly cool album that my dad had when I was a kid -- it always seemed that the songs and the mysterious world of adulthood were somehow inextricably entwined -- The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Red Hot and Cool. Cool, sophisticated, understated -- it's sort of the perfect music to have on in the background as you discuss the tax advantages of merging, through matrimony, with a going concern in a bright red dress. Somehow, the record cover, which I also remember well, was another thing altogether:

The photo always seemed to be the antithesis of the record. The woman in red -- who the liner notes explains is Suzy Parker, at the time one of the "most photographed women in the world" -- is supposedly "offering a come-hither look to the smiling leader at the piano while an out-of-focus Desmond soloed." I don't know -- the come hither look is hard to project from behind closed eyelids, which may either be a result of the smoke from the cigarette she's holding in her right hand or the too many vodka gimlets she's drunk that also led her to trip over the piano on her way to the bathroom. Then there's Brubeck, whose goofy smile makes him look like he's happy to have any female collapse on his piano in the off chance she might be drunk enough to like him but not too drunk to be able stay awake until his set is over.

The music, of course, is as great as I remember it -- don't judge the album by its cover.

Juxtaposed

In response to this old post on Elaine Pagels, Eusebius, Athanasius and other matters, reader Michael Rae sent me a long response, which I'll produce below (the comments on that old post are closed, which is just as well, because Mr. Rae's comments are of interest, and might not be noticed had he just left them there. The only changes I have made to them is to format the quotes with blockquotes, and to incorporate the URLs he provides as links.

Before quoting his email, I think I should point out that my specific problem with Pagels had to do with her citations. If I write a history of, say, the Chicago Cubs, and as part of my thesis mention that baseball's commissioner and other owners had conspired over the years to prevent the Cubs from winning the World Series ever since 1908, and in support of my allegation I direct the reader to a book showing that over the years the baseball commissioner and other owners had conspired to prevent the Red Sox from winning the World Series, I haven't exactly proven my case. The Cubs might also be victims of conspiracy, or they might be victims of their own ineptitude. Citing the book on the Red Sox doesn't prove anything one way or the other about the Cubs. In the same way, Pagels cites several works to support her contention that the Council of Nicea and Athanasius were instrumental in suppressing Gnostic Gospels like Thomas. Yet Nicea and Athanasius were far more concerned with the Arian heresy, which nearly prevailed over Athanasius and the orthodoxy he represented in that contentious fourth century. Athanasius left voluminous writings about the Arians, yet, so far as I am able to tell, uttered hardly a word about the Gnostic Gospels, suggesting to me at least they were not a preoccupation of his, or a serious threat to orthodoxy in the period in which he lived. And now, without further ado, the email:

Ideofact asks,

Was Athanasius' list [of books to be considered canonical] the earliest? In his Ecclesiastical History, in a passage completed most likely before 303 A.D., Eusebius ... does spell out a canon that doesn't differ all that much (it would be nice if Eusebius would have listed the individual Pauline epistles rather than lump them together, for example).

But if the issue is one of a divinely-inspired, infalliable Canon of scripture, no amount of disagreement can be brooked. What is interesting is how much diversity there was in views on this subject even as late as the end of the second century, and even amongst the proto-orthodox camp within Christianity: see the proto-orthodox authors amongst those given here.

Note the apparent acceptance of the canonicity of works such as the Epistle to the Laodiceans, I Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Apocalypse of Peter by proto-orthodox writers such as Clement of Alexandria, Didymus the blind, likely Origen, and even (ironically) Irenaeus; and their inclusion in the Moriturian Canon and Codex Sinaticus. Meanwhile, neither the Gospel of John nor the Revelation enjoyed universal acceptance, even among the proto-orthodox.

Ideofact continues:

 Juxtaposing Nag Hammadi, where a large cache of gnostic gospels were found, with Athanasius' setting forth of the canon creates something of a misleading impression -- that until Athanasius' letter, those works were part of mainstream belief, and that, in order to fortify Athanasius' newly formed Canon, they were suppressed. I'm not sure that's quite the way it happened...

[commenter] steve h chimes in:

Intriguing...

Somehow, the image of some early church authority clamping down on (and burning?) 'unauthorized gospels' seems to haunt modern re-tellings of church history.

This may be another instance of that idea. Is there any direct evidence that book-bannings (or book-burnings) ever happened? Especially against the wishes of the common believer? Posted by: steve h

Probably the most famous -- and unfortunately exaggerated -- bookburnings by the emerging State-sponsored Church from around the time of Athanasius and the Nag Hammadi burial was the destruction of the Serapeum ordered by Theophilus bishop of Alexandria: because a significant amount of the Liibrary of Alexandria was housed there and in other temples ordered razed, much of the Library's collection was destroyed gleefully along with the icons. Paulus Orosius' History Against the Pagans says that  "there exist in temples book chests which we ourselves have seen, and, when these temples were plundered, these, we are told, were emptied by our own men in our time, which, indeed, is a true statement."

This event has been exaggerated into a wholesale destruction of the Library, which isn't accurate; it has also been confounded with the later murder of Hypatia by a Christian mob under the goading of Cyril, Theophilus' nehphew and successor as bishop.

Other contemporaneous examples of book-burning by the ascendant Roman state Christianity, of clearly heresiological motivation, are given in Clarence A. Forbes CA. Books for the Burning. Transactions of the American Philological Society. 1936; 67:114-25.

Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, heresies and opposition to Christianity frequently led to the burning of books. The following definite instances exhaust the information of the present author, but could probably be supplemented by a theologian thoroughly versed in early Christian literature. Before the middle of the fourth century Bishop Paulinus of Dacia, accused of trafficking in magic, was expelled from the Church, and his books of enchantments were burned by Macedonius, another bishop.34 In 398 Arcadius consigned the writings of Eunomius and his adherents to the flames.35 In 435 and again in 448 Theodosius and Valentinian commanded the public burning of unorthodox books, and particularly those of Nestorius, in order to curb the Nestorian heresy and to support the decisions of the Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus.36

The decree of 448 also singled out for condemnation a powerful attack upon Christianity by the neo-Platonist Porphyry. Taylor describes Porphyry as the "founder of Biblical higher criticism."37 The relentless destruction of his work Kata_ Xristianw~n and any other books of a similar nature was decreed in the following words: "We order to be committed to the fire all the writings that Porphyry, impelled by his own madness, or any one else, has composed against the holy Christian religion, no matter in whose possession the books are found. For all the books that move God to wrath and that harm the soul we do not want to have come even to men's hearing." 38

In 455 Marcian, the successor of Theodosius on the throne, fulminated with a decree for the burning of any books or writings which supported the dogmas of Apollinarius, the fourth century heretic of Laodicea, and of Eutyches, another heretic of similar views.39"

Thanks to Mr. Rae for the fine summation -- although I'm still not sure it does much to back up Pagels' claims regarding the Nag Hammadi gospels in the fourth century, which was what I was getting at in my original post.

Newark, N.J., July 1937

I spent most of the day at the Library of Congress, and while I had a few humiliating moments (it's been years since I last had to load a microfilm reader, and I managed to screw it up pretty badly the first time I tried today), it made me pine for the days when I spent a good portion of my days doing research. I was looking for information on something that happened in New Jersey in July 1937 (don't mean to be vague, but to explain it, I'd have to write a whole lot more than I want to just now) when I came across this tidbit, from the Newark Evening News of July 12, 1937:

Campaign Book Sale May Not Be Probed

WASHINGTON (U.P.) -- House Democratic leaders indicated today that Republican Leader Snell's resolution for a special investigation into alleged sales of the Democratic campaign book to corporations would be pigeonholded.

Snell charged that the corrupt practices act had been violated in the sale at $250 a copy of books autographed by President Roosevelt.

I think corporate contributions to political campaigns (if that's what we're talking about here; it's unclear whether the $250 ended up in Roosevelt's campaign chest -- unlikely since he wasn't running until 1940 -- or was going to congressional campaigns) would violate the Tillman Act of 1907, which banned corporate contributions, and not the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1910 (amended in 1925), which set expenditure and disclosure requirements for congressional campaigns. Interesting to see how at least some things are consistent...

In other news from July 1937, the Navy had all but abandoned hope of finding aviatrix Amelia Aerhart, and Newark was shocked when a 15 year old boy and his 16 year old sweetheart sneaked off to New York City to get married. Intercepted by New York police at the train, the couple was returned to Newark.

I wish I'd printed out more pages, but one of the things that struck me was how much international news there was, how it was prominently played, and how little of it -- as far as we knew at the time -- affected America. Plenty of page one stories on the Japanese in Nanking; analyses asking whether Hitler's advisers were driving him to seek the annexation of Austria, or the other way around; tensions over the British plan to partition Palestine, and so on. And remember, these were Newark, New Jersey, papers -- not exactly the elite press of the day.

The business pages were jarring to read. The stories dealt almost solely with what we would call commodities -- coal production up; copper hits an all time high; Japan is the largest importer of U.S. steel. Labor matters ended up in the A sections, for the most part.

The sports pages seemed not much different than those of today -- particularly the futility of the Phillies...