Category: Publishing Industry Including Newspapering

Nothing Random / In the Ring – BONUS POST

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WARNING: VERY, VERY LONG POST

The first Bonus Book of the Week is “Nothing Random, Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built” by Gayle Feldman, published in 2026. Ironically, the writing in this tome was awkward and contained bad grammar in certain spots. Anyway, the author recounted the U.S. book industry of a bygone era– a decades-long saga typical for a business run by alpha males with clashing egos.

The reader might recall that prior to the internet, publishing a physical book required months and months of advance preparation, involving what would now be considered a bloated staff. The publishing personnel took pride in their work, and truly cared about doing quality work. It wasn’t all about the big dollar sign as it is nowadays.

In summer 1963, author Ayn Rand, on contract with publisher Random House, was writing a book of essays, one of which was super-controversial. Rand contended that JFK was fascistic, supporting her arguments by quoting the president, showing how he sounded like Hitler and Goering. She truly believed that the most prosperous nation would have purely capitalistic economics, and completely libertarian politics. She felt capitalism is a meritocratic system.

But to start with, capitalism requires a government that provides and maintains the systems of a healthy, well-educated workforce. When private entities provide essential services such as healthcare and education, there occurs corruption– because profit-seeking entities favor money over people. Therefore, the government needs to have some socialistic systems in the forms of: financial assistance for certain of its citizens, locally run public schools, public libraries and public transportation, to name a few.

Capitalism is a meritocracy only insofar as there’s no cronyism between the government and business leaders. Pure meritocracy is a fantasy. There is always a certain level of corruption in government, that waxes and wanes with the tenor of the times. This is inevitable due to the greed of human nature. Public-private partnerships are a necessary evil in a democratic society.

So arguably, Rand’s political and economic systems are a recipe for the eventual formation of an oligopolistic oligarchy, run by fighting warlords. Sounds familiar.

One bright spot in today’s sorry state of affairs in America, can be seen in today’s communications environment: This is the Golden Age of Free Speech. The internet has allowed anyone and everyone to have their say if they want to– on social media, or if they get their own website– with no censorship. And no one needs to have great wealth or power anymore, in order to do so.

Read the book to learn much, much, much more about Bennett Cerf’s life and times.

The second Bonus Book of the Week is “In the Ring, The Trials of A Washington Lawyer” by Robert S. Bennett, published in 2008. This wordy volume contained awkward phrasing and bad grammar in certain spots. But it showed how tolerance for criminality in the United States government has skyrocketed.

The huge surge in the demand for white-collar criminal-defense attorneys in recent decades, is one indication. Bennett thought the attorney’s job is to do everything possible short of illegal or unethical behavior, to help save his client’s reputation and freedom. He recounted several legal cases he handled.

One, in 1981, involved U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr., who– after indisputable evidence of corruption surfaced– was convicted in the ABSCAM scandal. The investigating committee was truly nonpartisan. After the trial, Williams’ fellow senators felt his continued presence compromised the dignity of their government body, and therefore, they were obligated to expel him. Williams eventually resigned. HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Unethical behavior and criminality have reached such a screaming crescendo that this country’s TOP leader (not simply a senator!) and his cronies are staying in power. And Congress is letting them.

The Democrats are letting the GOP have their way, thinking voters will blame the GOP– as the GOP has a majority in Congress; Democrats think they will win back a lot of seats in the midterm elections. But some voters are angry at the Democrats for looking weak, and not fighting back.

The concentration of power among the billionaires has gotten so extreme, that in the near future, the United States must return to the 1950’s era mentality of: (like the healthcare company ChenMed’s culture) Americans’ expecting to be treated by medical doctors who are trusted family friends; and taxing the rich as the standard, acceptable way of life.

Or else, the United States will continue to devolve into the kleptocracy of a Third World country.

Bennett showed how, when an international incident occurs, there are complicated, incestuous global relationships that require delicate negotiations. In the case of a 1997 Soviet-Georgian diplomat’s drunken-driving accident in Washington, D.C. in which someone died, controversy ensued as to whether the diplomat should have immunity from jail-time or fining. The U.S. could have instead cut off financial aid to Soviet Georgia as punishment. However, retaliatory action could be taken against American diplomats at embassies around the world.

The author wrote, “I have always felt that there was more business for criminal lawyers representing companies when the Republicans were in power rather than the Democrats.”

Anyway, read the book to learn of several additional situations which Bennett felt he handled skillfully, despite his having to deal with alpha males with hubris syndrome, James Bond wannabes, black ops and CIA operatives.

Regarding the aforementioned issues, here’s a song that answers the question: Why are the billionaires keeping Trump in office? It’s what Trump is singing to the few people still working for him.

U.S. of A.

sung to the tune of “Y.M.C.A.” [the album version] with apologies to The Village People and to whomever else the rights may concern.

My men, there’s no need to feel shame. I say, my men, immortalize my name. I say my men, ’cause I rule this great game. There’s no need to ask, am I stopping?

My men, I love making dough. I say my men, here is where you can go. You can stay here. I’ll rule the world for all time, all on the American taxpayers’ dime.

It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

It has everything for us men to enjoy. Our PR guys put out the best noise.

It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

My pardons will get you clean. I’ll help you lie-cheat-and-steal. The courts favor all our deals.

My men, we get rid of enemies. I say my men, I do cover-ups with ease. I say my men, you must re-district with me, and you build my ballroom, you see.

Oh yes, I must rule by myself. I say my men, I can be a big help. You must be here, in the U.S. of A. ‘Cause it’s my way or the highway.

It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

It has everything for us men to enjoy. Our PR guys put out the best noise.

It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

My pardons will get you clean. I’ll help you lie-cheat-and-steal. The courts favor all our deals.

My men, I am making world peace. I say my miracles, never ever ever cease.

I know you’re glad, that I am alive. I, the world’s savior have arrived.

Always, my men come up to me. They thank me. I am backed by Wall Street. I give them, to the U.S. of A. I can help myself to its riches every day.

It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

It has everything for us men to enjoy. Our PR guys put out the best noise.

U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

My men, my men there’s no need to feel shame. I say my men, immortalize my name. I say my men, ’cause I rule this great game.

U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A.

My men, my men, we get rid of enemies. I say my men, I do cover-ups with ease.

U.S. of A. You’ll find me plundering the U.S. of A.

My men, my men, I must rule by myself. I say my men, I can be a big help. Just go to the U.S. of A.

U.S. of A. It’s fun to plunder the U.S. of A…

Crazy Town

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The Book of the Week is “Crazy Town, The Rob Ford Story” by Robyn Doolittle, published in 2014.

In this volume, the author described political shenanigans before, during and after a mayor of a major world-class city was caught: on video committing a shocking act, behaving badly, spouting inflammatory nonsense, and palling around with criminals. Canadian-style.

These cobbled-together writings of Doolittle, an investigative journalist, were chronologically disorganized and thus became redundant, but she did take a lot of trouble to fact-check and make the story suspenseful.

Rob Ford was born into a wealth family in May 1969 in a Toronto suburb. He and his siblings spent their own money to get him elected to the city council in 2000. For more than a decade, he amassed a grass-roots base of supporters whom he helped personally. Ford remained a “loose cannon” even after he and his siblings hired political consultants to advise him on how to get elected mayor of Toronto in 2010. He promised voters he would minimize taxes, cut the budget on subsidies of events and programs of a cultural nature, and cancel an already-in-progress, above-ground, light-railway project to plan and build a subway project instead.

In early 2011, Ford could brag that he had balanced Toronto’s budget without service reductions or tax increases. However, he got away with that only because he was coasting on surpluses from his predecessor’s prior years. By autumn, he was forced to propose budget cuts. As of spring 2012, “According to three former staff members and a close confidant, senior staff had been trying to get Ford into rehab for more than a year. They believed his drinking was affecting his job.”

The author considered the aforementioned video, “the scoop of the century.” Really?? Political wrongdoing has become a cliche in the past couple of centuries, even for world leaders, not just mayors. It has become trivial in recent decades because people have become desensitized to it. The scoop of the century really ought to be breaking news of a truly world-changing event that is, for instance, associated with large-scale genocide and / or atrocities, such as Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the dropping of the atom bombs, or 9/11.

There are always going to be celebrity scandals, but global game-changers merit mention in the history books. They have big ideas behind them– although tabloid trivia is entertaining and a welcome distraction from infuriating and depressing politics.

Anyway, read the book to learn Ford’s entertaining story.

The Forgotten Founding Father

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The Book of the Week is “The Forgotten Founding Father, Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture” by Joshua Kendall, published in 2010.

Webster was born in October 1758 in western Hartford, CT. His 1778 Yale class consisted of forty graduates. In the 1780’s, he created a spelling and grammar primer for early childhood education that improved upon the then-standard text. It used phonics to teach pronunciation. He believed that Americans– who had recently declared their independence from Britain– should develop their own style of English, to differentiate themselves.

In 1782, beginning with Maine and Vermont, northeastern colonies passed laws on the copyrighting of original literary works. Even though the U.S. Constitution was ratified in June 1788, federal law superseded state law only after Congress passed a law granting a fourteen-year copyright term in 1790.

Throughout his life, Webster propagandized via publishing inflammatory, libelous, anonymous writings in the major newspapers in the states in which he lived– Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.

Webster also was one of the first people to collect data on Americans. In 1785 and 1786, he traveled around the thirteen colonies and counted the number of homes (from a few hundred to a few thousand) in major cities. To financially support himself, he went on the lecture circuit. He was a capitalist at heart.

“Webster thus was counting on the Philological Society to help him cash in on the passage of the Constitution which suddenly improved the commercial prospects for his books.” He could sell his federally copyrighted book more efficiently with less competition, by arguing that standardized school curricula in all the states, would help unify the country.

However, around 1812, when Webster was elected as Representative in the Massachusetts statehouse, he reversed himself on Federalism, and instead advocated states’ rights. He jumped on the bandwagon in attempting to oust president James Madison. His political views were liable to change with his strategic interests– as do those of any opportunistic, power and money-hungry alpha male.

In late 1828, Webster’s American Dictionary, containing about seventy thousand words, was introduced to America. At the dawn of the 1830’s, “Having personally lobbied the executive and legislative branches of government, Webster did not neglect the judiciary. He was hoping to get the Supreme Court to unite behind a certificate in support of his dictionary.”

Read the book to learn about Webster’s other lifetime achievements, and his times.

As can be seen, there’s nothing new under the sun since Noah Webster’s generation. Here’s a song about that.

POLITICAL HEROES

sung to the tune of “Celluloid Heroes” (the long version) with apologies to The Kinks, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Every candidate’s a schemer, and every candidate is bought, and every candidate hires bullies. Most lie without a second thought. There are fixers at every level, from the White House to the streets. And you can read about their districts and political-wards. Their myths are written with every tweet.

Don’t be unfair to The Donald, as you review his sordid past. He was persistently hostile and agile. He amassed enough power to last. He attempted a coup with his cronies, and sat himself on a throne, but he ended up golfing and babbling, because his dictatorship got old.

You can see armored cars as you drive around their districts and political-wards, bigwigs who have LEGacies. Most you’ve never even heard of. They have their entourages and consultants and volunteers in their campaigns. The ones who succeed have the best public-relations brains.

President Donald Trump looks very vacant indeed. AI software does his public-addresses. HE can no longer lead.

Avoid disparaging Donald Trump or you’re in for a legal fight, and worship Donald Trump because his was such a glorious life.

If you said “Voting for him, you’re garbage,” Donald Trump would smear you good, and when you voted against Donald Trump, he cried “fraud!” and sent in his hoods.

Please don’t TREAD now on dearest Donald, ’cause he’s actually TACO, not tough. He should have begun younger in campaigning. Too bad he’s only made OF flesh and blood.

You can see armored cars as you drive around their districts and political-wards, bigwigs who have LEGacies. Most you’ve never even heard of. They have their entourages and consultants and volunteers in their campaigns. The ones who succeed have the best public-relations brains.

Every candidate’s a schemer, and every candidate is bought, and every candidate’s in show biz. Most lie without a second thought. And those who are successful are always on their guard. They’ve got lawyers, judges and thugs, in their districts and political-wards.

Political life is a nonstop soap-opera media show. An angry, nasty world of real-life villains and heroes.

Political heroes always personally gain. And political heroes seize-the-day in their TIME.

You can see armored cars as you drive around their districts and political-wards, bigwigs who have LEGacies. Most you’ve never even heard of. They have their entourages and consultants and volunteers in their campaigns. The ones who succeed have the best public-relations brains.

Political heroes always personally gain. And political heroes seize-the-day in their TIME.

Political life is a nonstop soap-opera media show. An angry, nasty world of real-life villains and heroes.

Political heroes always personally gain. And political heroes seize-the-day in their TIME.

All the Worst Humans

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The Book of the Week is “All the Worst Humans, How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians” by Phil Elwood, published in 2024. This short volume was authored by an alcoholic adrenaline-junkie and occasional drug addict who was happiest when he was afforded opportunities to use his creativity to help his clients weasel out of image-trouble, burnish their image, or launch a smear campaign.

Born around 1980, Elwood began to acquire valuable contacts in Washington, D.C. when he did a summer internship in the U.S. Senate. Elwood was pleasantly surprised that, after ruining his own reputation, one such contact wrote a recommendation letter on his behalf to help him get accepted to a different college.

Most of the time, the following publications are the major influencers on breaking news: Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, Politico, Axios, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The last three have a paywall– users must subscribe to them, and pay to read their articles. As is well known, in the last several decades, elected officials and their staffs in Washington, D.C., the media, the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, professional sports and Wall Street have all incestuously melded together to create one big gossip circle. Readers who are no longer willing to pay for news, miss out on the gossip.

The author commented that there are currently a few tens of thousands of people who call themselves “journalists” while there are a few hundreds of thousands of people employed in the public relations industry. Very nearly all (except for this blog!) global communications are now sponsored-opinions, after so many decades of changes to information-sharing. Four of many milestones that set shameful precedents include:

  • In 1963, a journalist broke the taboo against prying into the personal lives of professional athletes when he revealed that Sandy Koufax was adopted. After that, privacy invasion became the norm.
  • In 1982, the New York Times eliminated the firewall between its editorial and advertising departments. Sports Illustrated did the same in the late 1980’s.
  • The year 1984 saw Republicans launch a fishing expedition of, and vicious smear campaign against Democrat vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s husband. Even for modern times, the high level of nastiness was extreme– and Republicans have continued such behavior to date, more than the Democrats.
  • Beginning in the 1980’s, the FCC relaxed its antitrust laws, allowing Rupert Murdoch to create a monster-sized multimedia empire (by purchasing the New York Post newspaper, Twentieth Century Fox, HarperCollins and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few propaganda outlets) with its attendant extremely large concentration of resources that allowed for infinite conflicts of interest that afforded him and his cronies the kinds of growth opportunities that free-market competitors couldn’t possibly hope to match.

To get additional information on how money, power and political hacks have corrupted every aspect of how people find out what’s going on in the world, feel free to read all the posts in this blog’s category “Publishing Industry Including Newspapering.”

Anyway, the author planted the following naive passage in his writing: “Salaries in some newsrooms are going up. Private equity is buying up media companies left and right. Foreign nations are investing heavily, too. Lines of ethics are blurring.” Newsflash: all these trends are decades-old!

Nonetheless, read the book to learn of the author’s adventures in image-management.

Along these lines, here’s a song about yet another downfall of someone once-rich and powerful (brought to you by Elwood-style PR.). This is what the Democrats are singing to the American president, whose name rhymes with “rump” and “dump.”

MIDTERMS-KARMA

sung to the tune of “Instant Karma” (1970 version) with apologies to the Estate of John Lennon and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

Gonna flip the states that are Red.

You’ll try to give yourself a pardon.

No one will shut up and take your bread.

All the world has had enough,

laughing behind your back,

all over the earth you’re a TACO.

They know you go low, yeah, low.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

A man like you is once-and-always.

Even the “new” Nixon wasn’t the “new” Nixon.

Yours is an open and shut case.

Your sins, the whole world is gonna see.

You’ll be blasting the fools in your GOP.

Everyone on earth knows who you are. A has-been tsar.

Far Right you are.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on. Everyone. Come on.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

You lay down with dogs, you got fleas.

You know a man is known by,

the company he keeps.

Everyone knows you’re outa here.

You’ve made so many live in pain and fear.

Why are you there, when you should be nowhere?

You got more than your share.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Gone and gone and gone, gone and gone.

Yeah, yeah, alright, uh-huh, uh.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Gone and gone and gone, gone and gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone…

Winchell

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The Book of the Week is “Winchell, Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity” by Neal Gabler, published in 1994. Two cliches that apply to the likes of Walter Winchell’s role in the evolution of the American entertainment industry include: THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, AND DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN.

Born in April 1897 in East Harlem, Winchell got into Vaudeville as an adolescent. In the 1920’s, there were about six major New York City newspapers, and readers had their favorite columnists. In August 1924, Winchell got his own column, specializing in Broadway gossip in the newly launched Evening Graphic.

Winchell’s career took off. By summer 1929, he was writing for the Hearst-owned paper, the Mirror. The following spring, he launched a radio show, and the following summer, he acted in a movie. He associated with Mobsters, advertising their night clubs while he received protection from them.

Winchell vacillated between suffering from imposter syndrome, and behaving like an alpha male with hubris syndrome. He was a dream dispenser for his readers; they aspired to adopt the lifestyle of “Cafe Society.” In the 1930’s, this set consisted of star-struck social climbers, heirs and heiresses who had done nothing to merit their own celebrity.

Winchell acquired significant power to make or break peoples’ fame with his column, by promoting or smearing them. During the Depression, he honed his showmanship and propaganda techniques, becoming a strong political influencer. Beginning in 1933, he flacked for FDR and smeared Hitler. His rhetoric was anti-Communist, anti-Fascist and anti-isolationist.

Lacking significant formal education, Winchell rode a wave of success based on envy, anger and vengeance, into the 1950’s. The author wrote, “The real grievance was the control he exercised over his social and intellectual superiors and what that control portended for the elites.”

Read the book to learn a lot more about Winchell and others that smacks of other public figures whose rises and falls have been largely similar, in the history of this country.

We Get Attention – BONUS POST

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Here’s a little ditty in connection with the real motives behind the ridiculous vacillations in the politically expedient pronouncements of the likes of Anthony Fauci, Bill Barr and Alan Dershowitz in the last three years and change.

WE GET ATTENTION

sung to the tune of “I Got Rhythm” (the studio version) with apologies to The Happenings.

In this hyped and waffling world
we often can get bossed.
And we’re like the network, Fox.
We flip-flop a lot because

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We get attention.
We had power.
We’re in good company
when they ask for media whores.

We’ve got amnesic viewers.
And more good lines.
We’re in good company
when they ask for media whores.

We get money (We get money.).
We don’t have shame (We don’t have shame.).
You won’t find it
round our door.

No more fairness (No more fairness.).
No more balance (No more balance.).
We’re in good company
when they ask for, when they ask for,
media whores.

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We get money (We get money.).
We don’t have shame (We don’t have shame.).
You won’t find, you’re never gonna find it
round our door.

We get attention.
We had power.
We’re in good company
when they ask for media whores.

In this hyped and waffling world

clip-clip-clip-clip-clip-clip-clip-clip-clip-clip
clip-clip-attention
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We get attention.
We get attention.
We get attention.
We get attention.

Voices From Tibet

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The Book of the Week is “Voices From Tibet, Selected Essays and Reportage” by Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong, edited and translated by Violet S. Law, published in 2014.

In 1910, Great Britain mandated that Tibet become part of China. The territory consisted of yak and sheep herders and barley farmers. Fighting in Tibet ensued until October 1950, when China got its way. Mao Tse-Tung directed his People’s Liberation Army to take it over, except for the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). That bit of land was led by a Buddhist leader called the Dalai Lama. In 1959, he was forced to assume a government-in-exile in India.

More recently, Tibet, with a population of approximately six million, is a mountainous region that is twelve thousand feet above sea level and three and a half times the size of the state of Texas. It has seen decades of violence from protesters agitating for independence. In July 1994, the Chinese government launched a smear campaign against the Dalai Lama. Dissidents who had any connections to Buddhism, even tenuous ones, were imprisoned or killed.

Two political dissidents– a married couple– whom the Chinese government has oppressed due to their stance on freedoms in Tibet include: Tsering Woeser (a Chinese army officer’s daughter, a poet, born in 1966) and Wang Lixiong (a novelist born in 1953).

In 1998, Wang’s writings didn’t advocate subversion, but rather, sought to educate people to effect political change, proposing a gradual approach toward Tibetan democracy. In 2001, he resigned his membership in the Chinese Writers’ Association because its actions offended his sensibilities. The Chinese government expelled him from Friends of Nature, an environmental organization he co-founded.

In 2003, Tsering was fired from a job with a publisher because she praised the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa (a Buddhist leader), and encouraged belief in religion. She moved from Tibet to Beijing and became an unofficial spokesperson for Tibetan dissidents in China. Beijing allowed a little more free speech than Tibet. She posted writings on a foreign website rather than through print-media so it was harder for the Chinese government to harass her.

In 2008, more kinds of people agitated against China’s control of Tibet. Nuns, monks, local vendors, students, farmers and nomads demanded that the Dalai Lama be allowed to return to Tibet. In 2011, almost two dozen of the religious ones set themselves on fire in protest. In 2012, about eighty of them did.

In 2006, China opened the Qinghai-Tibet rail line.”What is unfolding in Tibet is pseudo-modernization, essentially a kind of invasion, a sugar-coated act of violence.” That sounds like colonialism, but in 2008, in the Tibetan city of Lhasa, the political environment was like that of Nazism. Chinese law enforcement officers detained and rounded up about seven hundred monks from monasteries, and took them to the last rail-line stop in Tibet.

The train cars smacked of Holocaust cattle-cars. The monks ended up in either political re-education camps or prison. Armed Chinese soldiers in the streets harassed monks and youths.

Tibet caught capitalistic fever from China. There was a “gold rush” in minerals and caterpillar fungi. Strangely, “The Buddha teaches us that all living beings are equal.” But the Buddhist monasteries in Tibet became hypocrites– were persuaded by an enterprising Chinese tour company to provide Mandarin and English-language translators to fill an (extremely lucrative) niche in the tourism industry. The Chinese controlled the business, which involved swindling tourists in various ways.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more biographical info on the two aforementioned dissidents, and the many additional ways that Tibetans are losing their culture (hint: by the turn of the twenty-first century, Tibet was becoming a regular Dubai) at the hands of the Chinese.

Intimate Memoirs – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Intimate Memoirs” by Georges Simenon, published in 1981. This tome’s intended readers were his four adult children. The author detailed: his and his family members’ lives through all their changing of residences, vacations, the dysfunctionalities in his relationships with others (wives, mistresses, governesses, household help, publishing and movie personnel, etc.), and his daughter’s writings.

Born in 1903, Simenon grew up in Belgium, and served in the military in both WWI and WWII. As a teenager, he began writing. He got rich in a short time, penning via typewriter each year, about six dime novels (eventually numbering dozens in his lifetime, some of which were made into movies) about a police detective named Maigret– whose character was partly based on his father.

By summer 1940, he had a wife and son, at which time they rented a chateau surrounded by a vegetable garden and poultry farm in a coastal sub-prefecture town in France. He was supposed to sign in every day at the police station. A couple of benign German officers were posted on the outskirts of the town.

For the rest of the war, the family stayed in French coastal towns, renting homes with farms for a year or two, then moving on. Basically, they were on vacation, except for one incident that reminded them that a war involving religious persecution was taking place elsewhere.

One day, a Vichy commissioner buttonholed the author and aggressively called him a Jew, demanding that the author prove otherwise, by showing the birth certificates of his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. By war’s end, many non-Jewish wealthy people had become wealthier through profiteering, while the peasants suffered the hardships of rationed goods.

The author wrote of powerful, money-grubbing people, “Sometimes there are indeed fatalities. And aren’t the worst brutes the ones that get the most applause? I no longer look on all this as an outsider. When I first got to Lakeville [Connecticut in the USA] I was told ‘Here you have to belong…'”

Read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know, both happy and sad, about what the author wanted his children to know.

ENDNOTE: Speaking of the worst brutes, here’s a little ditty in connection therewith (This is the song Donald Trump is singing now):

THE ULTIMATE BULLY

sung to the tune of “The Boxer” with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.

I am a super-rich man
all-powerful and bold.
I’ve-always-had HIGH resistance
to acknowledging my failures and broken promises.
At-bullying, I’m the best.
My base hears what it wants to hear
and cheers on the unrest.
mm hm, hm hm hm hm hm hm, hm
When I left my home and my family
I was not in THE least coy,
I had to teach my attorneys
dangers of beCOMing a-PR-sensation. I-wasn’t scared.
Making deals, seeking out
the easy suckers and easy girls
looking FOR the
ways I could use them in my World.

lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie

Paying minimal workers’ wages
I start handing out the jobs
and pad my coffers.
One-after-another bankRUPtcy
to disappear through.
As a first resort,
I’ve made smearing, scapegoating and suing,
a na-tion-al sport.

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la

lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie

Now I’m huddling with my attorneys
and wishing I was golfing at Mar-a-Lago.

But the New York City renters are in need of me,
you can’t indICT me. You’re all DOPES.

I hire the best doxers
and go to legal extremes,
so you CARry a reminder
that anytime I-can lay you down
or cut you while I lash out
in my anger with no shame.
You’ll be bleeding,
you’ll be bleeding,
and the-spiter-in-me remains.

mm-hmm

lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie
lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie…