I am no lawyer but nonetheless

The Column: 06.16.23

I like the word “weaponization,” and I am looking for an opportunity to use it if, say, a cop pulled me over for making an illegal left turn (but I don’t drive anymore) or when a waiter puts silverware on the table — say, “Don’t weaponize that fork” — (but that would be awkward) or yell it at the e-bikes that race through red lights but they’re going so fast, they wouldn’t hear it.

I don’t recall that Richard Nixon used the word during Watergate or Bill Clinton when he was impeached for perjuring himself but I don’t think it will carry much weight now because the federal indictment was brought by Jack Smith, which is a great name for a prosecutor. It’s right out of a Dick Tracy comic. The name “Merrick Garland” sounds a little fruity to me, but I imagine DOJ looking down the list of prosecutorial names and eliminating the ones that ended with a vowel or a “ski” or “ovich,” until they found “Jack Smith” and yelled, “That’s it! Weaponize him!”

But the word is available for our use and the other morning when my wife looked at me and handed me a Kleenex and said, “Blow your nose,” and I did and then she pointed to her left nostril and I blew my left nostril and she said, “Again,” and I did it again and she said, “Okay” — it occurred to me that I could’ve said, “You are weaponizing that Kleenex in order to humiliate me and frustrate my attempt to make our home great again,” but it was too late. She was busy with her Dustbuster.

And then I looked at the Kleenex and saw what I’d blown into it and was somewhat chastened. I am a college graduate, the author of a couple decent novels and some sonnets that stand up pretty well, and I don’t think I should be going around the streets of New York with a noseful for the general public to observe. The doorman at our apartment building is not going to hand me a Kleenex and say, “Blow,” nor is anyone in the 86th Street subway station. (Maybe a retired third grade teacher might, but how many of those are you likely to encounter? I assume they’ve all gone to live in cabins in the Poconos.) Nor will a woman on the downtown B train say, “You have mustard on your shirt.” My wife is the only person who provides this service. Likewise, she does not turn to a policeman on the corner and say, “Would you mind scratching my back up between the shoulder blades?” That is my job and my privilege. I am her scratcher.

We are here to serve each other. Laws are meant to be enforced. The legal system, while it has its faults, is crucial to the maintenance of a civil society so that I can walk out the door and down the street with some confidence that a bozo won’t yell, “Go back where you came from!” and poke me in the snoot.

I am a man of privilege. I freely admit it. I am, I believe, the only writer in America who wrote a screenplay in which I played myself and the character played by Meryl Streep kissed me — it was right there in the script and she did it and unfortunately she required no retakes, but I wrote myself being kissed by her and thousands of people saw this back when there were movie theaters with giant screens — and yet I am a mortal human being too, and I sometimes snort in my sleep and my wife pokes me and tells me to turn the other way. And sometimes I am so absorbed in the artistry of my writing that I don’t notice what’s going on with my nose, and she has to hand me a Kleenex.

The indictment handed down by Jack Smith really should name Melania as a conspirator. It is a wife’s responsibility to say, “What in the world are you doing with those boxes?” when she sees a hundred of them piled in the basement and when she spots the “Top Secret” printed on them in bright red she’s supposed to yell, “Are you out of your mind? Get these out of here or I’m taking the kid and going to Slovenia.” But a wife who lets her husband go around with his hair like that, the little dinguses behind his ears, you have to wonder.

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JULY 29, 2023

THE AMERICAN MUSIC THEATRE

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Along for the ride, witty singer-songwriter Nellie McKay,charming singer-actor Christine DiGiallonardo, dazzling vocalist Heather Masse, actor Tim Russell (the man of a thousand voices), sound-effects wizard Fred Newman, and music director Richard Dworsky at the piano. Count on songs, jokes, the one-of-a-kind audience sing-along intermission, and of course, the latest News from Lake Wobegon.

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