 |
| The Cynic |
The Cynic And The City Mouse At The Oracle
The Oracle is owned by a hedge fund manager in lower Connecticut. The restaurant opened briefly when Coronavirus first started breathing on its windows and, as quickly, was shuttered by order of the honorable Governor Ned Lamont, along with many other restaurants in Connecticut, including the two diners most frequented by The Cynic for breakfast.
The reader, if he is attentive to the post-modern snake pit,
may have noticed that Americans, as a general rule, are a tolerant people. They
are disarmingly tolerant of revolutionary minded politicians; how else to account
for the popularity and frequent press notice of a radical political zephyr such as New
York U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
However tolerant Americans may be of politicians given to
revolutionary experimentation, they guard jealously their own personal prerogatives.
The Cynic greatly resented the facemask he had been forced to wear for a full
year, regarding it as an emblem of subservience to such as Ocasio-Cortez, but
the closing of his favorite diners – there were three of them -- especially
rankled.
Rather late in life, The Cynic began pumping out political
columns for an editor he admired.
His column writing, which he pursued doggedly for forty
years, began inauspiciously. He had written a letter to a newspaper concerning
an unfortunate incident involving a political candidate who was destined in
1981 to become the first African American Mayor of a large city in Connecticut.
The candidate had flourished during his campaign an
educational certificate that showed he had attended college somewhere in the
God forsaken snowy backwoods of New England.
The graduation certificate was, in fact, a dormitory scheme
got up by a few enterprising students low on cash. The newspaper -- as too
infrequently happens in the too tolerant post-modern period – uncovered the
scheme and plastered a lurid story all over its front page. It waited patiently
for a political eruption, which never happened. The modern world was even then
giving way to the post-modern world.
Days passed placidly by, no one was disturbed, the privileged white Republican running against the aspiring Democrat never made use of the pedagogical scandal in his campaign.
The item, The Cynic decided, should have been picked up by other papers in Connecticut. It had all the features of a rousing story – cloven hooves, horns and a tail.
The silence was deafening. So, The Cynic wrote his first
letter to a newspaper and soon after received a call from the paper’s Editorial
Page Editor.
“Have you written any columns for newspapers?”
“No.”
“No, eh?”
“No.”
Well, we thought your piece was well written. We’d like to
run it as a column.”
Silence on The Cynic’s end.
“Would that be all right with you?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Do you have anything else you can send along?”
“I can send you a couple of columns.”
“Great. Do that then. Your column will run in a few days.”
The Cynic raced to his monk’s cell in the basement of his
apartment building, quickly produced two columns and sent them off. Both were
printed. For the next ten years, he had never sent the Editorial Page Editor a
column that did not see print. Years later, he questioned the editor.
“The columns I’ve been sending you do not agree, many of
them, with editorial positions taken by your paper, and yet you have never
declined to print a single one. Why?”
“Two reasons,” said the editor. The op-ed page is not merely
the page opposite the editorial page. It is, or should be, a page that displays
some alternative opinion.” The editor here paused, as he often did when
searching for a reaction to something he said.
“And the second reason?”
“Few people read commentary. It is very low on subscribers
‘to read’ lists. Many readers turn first to the sports section, then the
obituaries, to see if any of their relatives have passed during the night, then
the town news section, then the front page, followed by the comic page, and so
on. Obituaries are often read, along with horoscopes and advice to the lovelorn
columns, political stories less so. It may have been H. L. Mencken who said
that journalism was the art of disclosing to perfect strangers the sad tidings
that John Smith had died who never knew that John Smith was alive?”
“Ah,” said The Cynic, feeling a throb of affection.
I must admit I was surprised to discover that The Cynic,
whom I had neglected for nearly half a
century, had kept up a long, unbroken correspondence with The City Mouse. These
two met at The Oracle for lunch, unmasked, a few days after the Honorable Ned
Lamont issued a plenary order that masks were more or less optional in newly
reopened restaurants, many of which had been closed by order of the Governor.
Across the nation, governors were now taking bows for having
terminated precisely the problems they had caused, The Cynic thought, through a
gross overreaction that had closed elementary schools, businesses of all kinds,
and some highly indispensible departments of government, such as Connecticut’s
General Assembly and its courts, producing social havoc and, now, gubernatorial
bows.
It was late April. Winter had retreated, though there was
still evidence of its disturbing eruption in some parking lots where mounds of
dirty snow piled high by plows lay awaiting May’s final disposition.
The City Mouse arrived at the restaurant first. She always
made it a point to arrive at restaurants before her companions, so that she
might choose a table, leisurely sip some wine, compose herself to receive her
company, and stare dreamily out a window, letting her imagination rove where it
will, a mental evacuation she greatly enjoyed. Her mind on such occasions felt
like a clean room, neatly organized, its windows propped open so that she could
feel a cool Autumnal breeze stroking her cheeks. With the arrival of The Cynic,
her mind would soon be fully furnished.
The Cynic wanted her to arrange a meeting between himself
and The Reverend, a fixture in Hartford for at least three decades.
“With the large cities in Connecticut,” The Cynic said soon
after sitting beside her, as always with his back to the wall, “you can’t be
too cynical. I don’t know how your Reverend friend Lucian survives there.”
“The Reverend is a monk in the middle of Gomorrah,” said the City
Mouse. “He is most happy being discontented, like you. There are places to
which he retreats to repair his ravaged soul. He likes both music and the
silence of an empty church.”
“Most of them are empty these days,” said The Cynic.
“Well, you take peace where you can find it. The desert
monks had their desert.
“He’s taken well to the name. I’ve met him only in media
reports. I was hoping you would be able to arrange an audience.”
“Sure, for what purpose?”
“I’m writing about the city, and I need some passports.”
“Sure.”
“Nice restaurant.
“Yes, my oasis. Try the risotto.
Comments