Ezra Klein learned from the Quakers that you need to shut up.

I'm reading "The Great Delusion Behind Twitter" (NYT).

Midway into that diatribe against Twitter, Klein takes what he calls "a weird turn" and starts talking about the Quakers:

"Frisch’s former students describe him as eccentric, nerdy, prone to lengthy classroom digressions about his stamp collection, dinosaurs or childhood snow days spent sledding."

"Any teacher who spends three decades in the classroom, speaking extemporaneously for hours on end to a roomful of teenagers, is going to have awkward moments. [Ben] Frisch might have had more of them, and they may have been a bit more awkward. But that was how he connected, and it was perhaps a way of connecting that is no longer possible. 'Everybody knew this guy was off — weird behavior, quirky,' said one parent who, fearing retribution against her child, insisted on anonymity. 'Maybe in the ’70s that would have been O.K., but not when you’re paying $45,000 a year in tuition.'"

From "A Teacher Made a Hitler Joke in the Classroom/It Tore the School Apart" (NYT). The joke was saying "Heil Hitler" after he noticed that his arm — in teaching a pre-calculus lesson involving angles — was in the Hitler salute position. "Frisch is a practicing Quaker, but his father was Jewish, and two of his great-grandmothers were killed at Auschwitz."

[Bo] Lauder [the principal at Friends Seminary] did not consider the “Heil Hitler” episode a close call. “Personally, I was appalled,” he told me. “I couldn’t imagine, even as a joke — and I grew up watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ — that in a class that had nothing to do with history or World War II or Nazism or teaching German language that an incident like that could happen.” I asked Lauder why he felt he needed to go so far as to fire Frisch. “One of our pledges is to make all of our students feel safe,” he replied. “And that is something that I take very, very seriously.”

That no one has accused Frisch of being an anti-Semite was beside the point: His invocation of the Nazi salute in a classroom full of high school students, regardless of his intentions, was enough to end his career. On today’s campus, words and symbols can be seen as a form of violence; to many people, engaging in a public debate about the nuances of their power is to tolerate their use. “I asked one of our lawyers, ‘How can I do this in a more Quakerly way?’ ” Lauder told me. “And he just looked at me and stated the obvious: There is no way to make a firing a Quakerly event.”

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

Isn't it making fun of the salute rather than promoting it?

Yes, but it's the Era of That's Not Funny, because how is a student ever able to be sure that the device of making a joke is not really a way to say the otherwise forbidden thing? I mean, what if a lot of students started greeting one another in the hallways of Friends Seminary with a big old Nazi salute and a hearty "Heil Hitler!" Would it be hilarious? Would it roundly make a mockery of Nazis?

You know what it would be?, I suddenly realize. It would be a real "I am Spartacus" moment! If all the students who think Mr. Frisch is getting an unfair punishment would greet each other henceforth with a Nazi salute and a hearty "Heil Hitler!" — what a protest that would be!

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Nazi salute, which I looked up because I wanted to see the extent of efforts to drain it of power by turning it into a big joke. I thought there'd be a substantial list under the "In popular culture" heading, but there are only 3 things, one of which is "Hogan's Heroes," the 1965-1971 TV show that the Friend's Seminary principal says he "grew up" watching:

• In a running gag in Hogan's Heroes, Colonel Klink often forgets to give the Hitler salute at the end of a phone call; instead, he usually asks, "What's that?" and then says, "Yes, of course, Heil Hitler." In the German language version of the show, called Ein Käfig Voller Helden (A Cage Full of Heroes), "Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz have rural Gomer Pyle-type accents," and "stiff-armed salutes are accompanied by such witticisms as "this is how high the cornflowers grow." The "Heil Hitler" greeting was the variant most often used and associated with the series; "Sieg Heil" was rarely heard.

• On August 11, 2017, Jeffrey Lord was fired by CNN for tweeting "Sieg Heil!" 

He was joking.

• A similar gesture was used by the fictional Nazi-affiliated organization Hydra, with both arms outstretched and the phrase "Hail Hydra" uttered by members of the organization.

There must be more pop culture examples. I can think of "Dr. Strangelove":



AND: Of course, there's "The Producers" ("Springtime for Hitler" is loaded with Nazi salutes):



ALSO: I know that's the more recent, more musical version of "The Producers." I thought the clip was excellent and used it, even though I'd gone searching for in the original 1967 movie, which you can see here. In that movie, Dick Shawn played the ridiculous Lorenzo St. DuBois (L.S.D.) who was intentionally miscast as Hitler in the so-bad-it's-good show "Springtime for Hitler." I love Dick Shawn in that movie, and went to read his IMDB page, and was fascinated by this:

Shawn won a huge fan base... touring in one-man stage shows which contained a weird mix of songs, sketches, satire, philosophy and even pantomime. A bright, innovative wit, one of his best touring shows was called "The Second Greatest Entertainer in the World." During the show's intermission, Shawn would lie visibly on the stage floor absolutely still during the entire time. By freakish coincidence, Shawn was performing at the University of California at San Diego in 1987 when he suddenly fell forward on the stage during one of his spiels about the Holocaust. The audience, of course, laughed, thinking it was just a part of his odd shtick. In actuality, the 63-year-old married actor with four children had suffered a fatal heart attack.

What an ending!

AND: Here's Dick Shawn on Johnny Carson in 1986, doing a comedy routine about how you can't do jokes anymore, because everything is dangerous:



It was already the Era of That's Not Funny as far as he was concerned.

Must I always be the thief?

It looks like Bob Dylan lifted lines from SparkNotes for his ramblings about "Moby Dick" in his Nobel Prize Lecture.

As [writer Ben] Greenman first pointed out on his website, Dylan seemingly invented a moment in Moby-Dick when a "Quaker pacifist priest" tells Captain Ahab's third mate, Flask, "Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness." While Greenman was unable to find the relevant quote in several editions of Moby-Dick, Pitzer discovered that SparkNotes described the preacher as "someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness."

In all, [Andrea Pitzer on Slate] said she found at least 20 sentences in Dylan's lecture that resembled the SparkNotes entry on Moby-Dick. Representatives for Dylan, the Nobel Prize committee and SparkNotes did not immediately reply to a request for comment....

Dylan: "Tashtego says that he died and was reborn. His extra days are a gift. He wasn't saved by Christ, though, he says he was saved by a fellow man and a non-Christian at that. He parodies the resurrection."

SparkNotes: "Tashtego … has died and been reborn, and any extra days of his life are a gift. His rebirth also parodies religious images of resurrection. Tashtego is 'delivered' from death not by Christ but by a fellow man – a non-Christian at that."...

As Pitzer points out, Dylan's Nobel lecture does not mark the first time he's been accused of plagiarism. He's long borrowed lyrics from other sources, with his 2001 album Love and Theft drawing criticism for lyrics seemingly culled from Junichi Saga's book Confessions of a Yakuza and Henry Timrod's Civil War poetry. Even Dylan's paintings from his 2011 exhibit, "The Asia Series," came under fire for their similarities to well-known photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Léon Busy.

In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan responded to the accusations of plagiarism pertaining to Love and Theft. "I'm working within my art form," he said. "It's that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It's called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it."

Pitzer: "Theft in the name of art is an ancient tradition, and Dylan has been a magpie since the 1960s. He has also frequently been open about his borrowings."

I was thinking about that old song: "Tears of rage, tears of grief/Must I always be the thief?" The answer, apparently, is yes!

Aunt Jemima's descendants want their share of that pancake money.

"The great grandsons of Anna Short Harrington, who was hired as the American pancake icon in 1933, claim that her family is entitled to a percentage of the company's revenue every time her likeness was used. They're now seeking $2 billion in compensation, plus a share of future revenue."

This is more of a public debate... or a shakedown. I can't imagine how any conceivable legal claim could survive a statute of limitations defense. But it's a publicity problem for Quaker Oats. And if you're going to apply moral pressure, it's convenient that the company is named after a religion associated with high moral values. At this point, the company's response is that Aunt Jemima is a fictional character symbolizing "a sense of caring, warmth, hospitality and comfort." The plaintiffs are leaning on us to see Aunt Jemima as "one of the most exploited and abused women in American history."

I wonder what the descendants of Larry have in mind litigation-wise? You know what I'm talking about? Larry? This is Larry:



Reparations... micro-reparations. If micro-reparations are $2 billion, just think what the reparations would be for all of the most exploited and abused people in American history.

"Even though the feminist project has been underway for decades now, plenty of people still view women doing work..."

"... especially nonservice work, in the same boggled way that you look at a dog walking on its hind legs. Is it still a dog? How can this be?"

Writes Amanda Marcotte, mangling or accidentally getting close to the famous Samuel Johnson quote:

I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

It's not that anyone thinks the woman preaching ceases to be a woman or the dog walking on its hind legs ceases to be a dog. It's that people act impressed simply because it happened and fail to hold the creature to the normal standard that would apply to men. I think Johnson's quote is regarded as quite sexist, but — looking only at this quote and not the whole body of Johnson's sayings and writings — it can almost be defended. It's patronizing to mention that a woman did something as if that's remarkable. Did she do it well? If you think women are as capable as men, that should be the question. But Johnson speaks in an aphoristic form that implies that women will never be able to preach well. He did not say — or Boswell did not transcribe his saying —You say a woman preached as you might say a dog walked on his hind legs; let me know when a woman preaches well.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?"

"And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

2 Corinthians 6:14-16, one reason why Puritans did not celebrate Easter. Another reason was that the celebration (as opposed to the event commemorated by the celebration) doesn't appear in the Bible.

Some Christian groups continue to reject the celebration of Easter due to perceived pagan roots and historical connections to the practices and permissions of the "Roman" Catholic Church. Other "Nonconformist" Christian groups that do still celebrate the event prefer to call it "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day", for the same reasons as well as a rejection of secular or commercial aspects of the holiday in the 20th and 21st centuries....

Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), as part of their historic testimony against times and seasons, do not celebrate or observe Easter or any other Church holidays, believing instead that "every day is the Lord's day," and that elevation of one day above others suggests that it is acceptable to do un-Christian acts on other days....

Today is Easter, a day that is celebrated for religious reasons and, alternatively, in a completely secular fashion. It is also a day that some people do not celebrate, and the reasons for noncelebration can also be religious — even among Christians — as well as secular.

Opposition to a celebration can be based on a problem with that particular celebration — as the Puritans objected to Easter because it's not in the Bible — or on a more general objection to holidays — the belief that all of our days deserve equal celebration. That idea too can be religious. As the Quakers say "every day is the Lord's day." And that idea can be secular: the recognition of the beauty and promise in every day.

Happy Easter/Happy Day to everyone, believer and infidel, yokemates and yolkmates.

"The proposed constitutional amendment really has nothing to do with marriage..."

"... it is a thinly veiled attack on gays and lesbians, part of a pattern of discrimination and institutionalized hatred. It is a strategy of power practiced by would-be tyrants throughout history."

Quakers assail the anti-same-sex-marriage amendnemt.

"The Holy City of" .... New York.

I asked a while back what the standard was for calling a city "the holy city of [name of city]." Najaf seems to qualify by some standard I was trying to detect. No place in the United States ever gets called "the holy city." Of course, this is testimony to the separation of church and state, a truly great idea. But if we were going to call a U.S. city holy, which one would it be? There are some interesting choices possible, but this morning the lyrics of this song were running through my head and I realized that Laura Nyro had long ago suggested the Holy City of New York:

... New York tendaberry
Blue berry
Rugs and drapes and drugs
And capes
Sweet kids in hunger slums
Firecrackers break
And they cross
And they dust
And they skate
And the night comes
I ran away in the morning
Now I'm back
Unpacked
Sidewalk and pigeon
You look like a city
But you feel like a religion
To me
New York tendaberry
True berry
I lost my eyes
I east wind skies
Here where I've cried
Where I've tried
Where God and the tendaberry rise
Where Quakers and revolutionaries
Join for life
For precious years
Joined for life
Through silver tears
New York tendaberry

Lawprofs will recognize that Nyro had a Seeger-type definition of religion.