Tolerance - Part 1 - Dell Shannon

Liberals constantly face the Skokie conundrum, what to do when one’s belief in tolerance requires allowing people so intolerant to exist they would rewrite the constitution if they could. At what point is it necessary to become intolerant to preserve an environment of tolerance? Or in that 1977 case, how does one separate the right of a group to request a parade permit through a Jewish neighborhood, from their right to receive that permit?

Liberals flock to the cause of an artist like Robert Mapplethorpe who’s shows are censored by people who dislike the subjects. But what does one do with a writer like Louis-Ferdinand Céline who’s accused of supporting the Nazis in France in world war II?

Elizabeth Linington poses such a problem. At the same time she wrote mystery stories under the name Dell Shannon that glamorized the Los Angeles police force, she also supported the John Birch Society.

At the time I wondered if I bought one of her books, was I was making a contribution. My immediate solution was to buy books from used book dealers. Unfortunately, that meant enjoying her work without paying her for her effort.

Her anomalous position became more obvious when O. J. Simpson’s lawyer dramatized general incompetence and brutality of her force. She was often accused of not knowing much about police procedures, so did she deliberately romanticize the authority figures as ideology?

Since I didn’t remember a strong streak of propaganda in her books, I decided to read some to see. By now, of course, they’re only available from used book dealers and she’s been dead since 1988.

First, let me say she’s a decent story teller with an ability to pace her narrative. She usually has one major plot that alternates between a number of minor tales, some resolved, some not. Her aim is to dramatize the work flow in a large organization.

Most of the minor plots are the humdrum of daily police life, the routine accidental homicides and thefts. Some accuse her of lifting them from police blotters. It’s probably what she meant when she said she did extensive research.

She also tries to portray a functioning bureaucracy with a number of people working on multiple problems, able to still concentrate on a few, but realizing many simply must be ignored. The idea of a functioning civil service is anathema to many conservatives today, but was not necessarily a tenant of the John Birch group.

Her selection of crimes and creation of undifferentiated policemen represents the realism in her work. There’s nothing about the view criminals are either stupid or ordinary people that is characteristic of a conservative ideology.

Her weaknesses as a writer leave her more vulnerable to political criticism. She has no ear for dialogue. When she portrays confrontations between suspects and police, she has them mouth polite euphemisms, especially for black cops. When the police are looking for suspects, they call them fags.

The one represents isolation, the other homophobia. Neither are representative of the John Birch society, but may be reasons one would not read her book.

She also has no ability to develop characters. Her black, hispanic and white cops, suspects and victims are interchangeable. When she tries to characterize individuals, she falls into stereotypes. The black policeman, Jason, is the son of a doctor who is an expert at everything. Lieutenant Mendoza inherited money from his grandfather and plays poker without being a gambler.

While there’s no malice in her limited imagination and writing skills, there’s a more subtle class bias. The policemen are all working class men with families, who worry about mortgages. Luis Mendoza doesn’t need his salary, has married an artist and lives in a renovated hacienda with horses and sheep. No alcoholics, no divorces, no wild bachelors.

Mendoza falls into the tradition created by Dorothy Sayers with Peter Wimsey and Ngaio Marsh with Roderick Alleyn. Unlike many of her contemporaries who also create well-to-do, intelligent heroes, she does try to provide the more realistic background of the typical police force.

Readers of genre fiction accept a number of conventions in exchange for a realistic portrayal of problem solving. However, her uneducated portrayal of the Los Angeles police force could not survive the reality of the O. J. Simpson case, when no one showed the skills and tolerance of her most minor police inspector.

She’s also been done in by advances in technology. Her books were written before DNA testing and computerized databases. The best she can do is match blood types and fingerprints. With no ability to gather evidence, she can only solve many of her crimes with suspects willing to confess as soon as policemen ask the correct questions.

Her estate and publisher don’t mention her political interests, probably because they don’t want to alienate potential readers. Her most ideological comments in the books I recently read occur in The Motive on Record (1982) when Mendoza’s wife visits travel agencies and is upset when they offer the newly available tours of eastern Europe. She constantly frets, why would anyone want to support a communist country with tourist dollars.

I wonder what a John Birch mystery would be. Someone who wanted to use fiction to spread a message would be more likely to choose the genre of Ian Fleming and John LeCarre. Within the context of a city police department it’s impossible to have authority figures who are always right.

The kind of policing we hear about with helicopters patrolling the slums of LA would not be used by burglary-homicide, despite the example of Simpson. The closest she comes is an interrogation in Death by Inches (1965) that inadvertently shows the fine the line between questioning and torture.

If the police can’t be John Birch heroes, then the villains must be communists. Starting her career in 1962, she would have needed murders in labor unions or anti-war groups, either communist infiltrators of legitimate groups or agent provocateurs in Marxist groups. Instead of religious zealots who kill infidel children, they would kill them when they became college atheists.

Those aren’t her plots. They don’t fit her vision of the daily routine of a city police force.

Without the plots, villains, heroes, or political vision she is simply a limited writer with an interesting vision of solving murders, hampered by her gentility. One can boycott her works for economic reasons, but there’s no reason to keep them away from innocent children who might be corrupted by her propaganda. She tries to dramatize a kind of tolerance with her diverse police force, and her writing requires readers exercise the same tolerance.

Disliking or liking them for aesthetic or emotional reasons is altogether another matter.

Religion - Part 5 - Elmer Gantry

I finally read Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry, promoted as "the greatest, most vital and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since Voltaire." It was a hard slog, with the depth of a case study rather than a novel, marred by predictable plotting and undeveloped characters.

As I read, I kept wondering, why were people so angry when it was published in 1927? Gantry was more a man with ambitions and some charisma limited by poor education and small town upbringing than a dangerous demagogue. He certainly is no where near as interesting as Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, and had none of their influence.

Billy Graham’s career is closer to Gantry’s. Both were associated early with women with greater credentials in evangelism than they. Graham married Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China. Gantry toured with a woman modeled on Aimee Simple McPherson. She died early, leaving the reader to wonder if his life would have been different had she lived.

Both changed churches. Gantry began as a Baptist, but was expelled for seducing a woman, then refusing to marry her. He joined the Methodists when they offered him new opportunities, but he continued to be haunted by the doubts of salvation planted by his mother’s church. Graham was born a Presbyterian, but changed to the Southern Baptist Convention. While he maintained that affiliation, his children were baptized as Presbyterians.

Most important, both mixed religion and politics as the pawns of more powerful men. Gantry discovered the value of politics when he supported an underdog mayoral candidate. He became friends with the movers and shakers of his community, and asked one for help when a woman tried to blackmail him. Lewis treats the relationship as one that normally arises in a small town, and only faults Gantry for his ambition when he conspires to lead the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.

Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst promoted Graham’s first revival in New York as a deliberate attempt to scare people into anticommunist crusades. With fame, came prestige which politicians exploited by appearing with him. With time, Graham himself became seduced by them, and slowly became their spokesman. Most see him less as a grasping Gantry, than as a tragic figure caught in the consequences of his own successes.

So, what is it that separates these men, makes Graham a hero, condemns the others as hypocrites?

The obvious answer is sex. For Swaggart, sex was central to religious experience. It represented the devil that must constantly be wrestled with: sometimes faith triumphs; sometimes man weakens and must reestablished his link with God through begging for forgiveness and repentance. The struggle is as constant as breathing.

Jim Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, dramatized the choices for women born since Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner who wanted sexual freedom within the shelter of the Assemblies of God that fostered Swaggart. Unfortunately for her, Bakker’s interest could not be sustained, and her struggle for faith degenerated into progressively more ludicrous make-up.

Elmer Gantry didn’t treat women as either sirens or sources of pleasure. He preferred women who doted on him. Unlike Swaggart who frequented prostitutes, Gantry maintained long time relationships with his mistresses. He broke with them for the same reason he tired of his wife; when his social world improved, they could not change, and no longer glorified his ego.

Lewis made a mistake when he introduced infidelity into his plot if he wanted to show a truly dangerous man like his religious contemporaries, Robert Shuler and J. Frank Norris who were broadcasting racism, nativism and homophobia in Los Angeles and Dallas. Lewis wasn’t interested enough in sex to create a sensual man. But his readers were interested enough to read more into his circumspect account of adultery, and looked no deeper into Elmer’s character.

It’s also possible sex was easier for them to discuss than the fact Gantry never met a single admirable clergyman among the Baptists and Methodists who ordained him. Those with genuine faith were ineffective. Most condemned evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, but less from belief than as received wisdom of their seminary training. Most voiced platitudes without understanding, and certainly none, but the marginal, ever had doubts.

In one scene, Gantry hosts a luncheon for the clergymen of Zenith to promote a united crusade against prostitution. As the men chat, Lewis shows each refusing to join, not because posse justice was wrong, but because each was too jealous of the potential success of Gantry.

Greed or the lust for power that characterized Gantry and many of his fellow clergymen still provokes many of the biggest church scandals. A woman set out to blackmail Gantry. Methodists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attacked Bakker and took over his ministry when Jessica Hahn accused him of adultery. Another revivalist, Marvin Gorman, hired detectives to spy on Swaggart.

People are not interested in recognizing an institution has failed. When they are confronted with wide scale duplicity, they search for the one person who can redeem their faith in institutions, who can reassure them a bad person does not contaminate all they’ve lived by. Billy Graham’s website recounts the downfalls of Swaggart, Bakker, and Falwell, then trumpets his compassion when it lets us know he visited in Bakker in prison. It goes further and tells us "Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message."

Lewis wants us to think Elmer Gantry has that ability when he asks his parishoners if they believe in the "fiendishness of my accusers," then promises to lead them in a crusade "for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land."

Lewis put too many characteristics of powerful ministers into one person to show the dangers of ambition alluded to with the luncheon. Gantry combines the weakness of Jimmy Swaggart and the fecklessness of Tammy Faye, who divorced her jailed husband, with the charisma of Graham and the media savvy of Jim Bakker. He has the opportunism of Norris and Shuler, but lacks the discipline to become Charles Coughlin.

When confronted with would-be heroes, people search for evidence of human frailty, and once that is exposed, no longer care. In real life, that concern destroys the power of men like Swaggart and Bakker. In the novel, it limits the dramatic impact to tawdry affairs. The truly dangerous man either disciplines himself to overcome his urges or sublimates them into his ambitions. One simply doesn’t worry at the end when Gantry is poised to take over napap, because one knows he’ll destroy himself.

Sources:
Graham, Billy. "Televangelist Scandals," at
unctv.org/ruthandbillygraham.

Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry, 1927; cover blurb from Literary Review on cover of 1958 Dell paperback edition.

Religion - Part 4 - Doubt

Some religions admit doubt while others deny it exists. Calvinists argued God’s grace was absolute, but no man could know if he was among the elect. Doubt drove searches for evidence of God’s favor.

Later Protestants argued from the evidence backwards. If you spoke in tongues, if you had a conversion experience, then you were in a state of grace. Good works, public service, wealth all became tokens of sanctification.

At every crisis in our past, we’ve taken the absolute over the unknown. Within a generation, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony abandoned their requirements for membership and adopted the half-way covenant that allowed children of church members to join without proof of grace. Election was transformed from personal experience to a collective family legacy that could be inherited.

Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were both schooled in southern religion, but the one was raised a Baptist, the other converted to Methodism. The first historically divided into warring sects while Methods hewed to central authority. The one group constantly argues theology, the other debates social issues. Both divided over slavery, but only the one still has northern and southern conventions; the other united its conferences in 1939.

Doubt survives among Carter’s Baptists, but not among Bush’s Methodists. One of the earliest, popular country songs illustrates the difference. Ada Ruth Habersohn, who worked with Methodist gospel musician Ira Sankey, wrote "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" around 1908.

In 1935, A. P. Carter rewrote the lyrics for the Carter Family as "Can the Circle Be Unbroken." The reason for the change was probably quite simple: record companies wanted artists to avoid copyright payments by writing their own songs, and artist obliged.

The nature of the change is speculation. It could be as simple as the preference for the sound of the hard consonants (can the circle) over the internal rhyme of the vowels (will the circle). Or, it could reflect the more Calvinistic theology of the south. A. P. was raised in a Methodist community, while his sister-in-law, Maybelle, was from a Baptist communion in southwestern Virginia.

Will, with it’s implied allusion to free will, assumes ascension to heaven, and the only issue is if an individual has taken the actions necessary to ensure a family reunion. Can invites speculation about what’s possible, introduces doubt.

Since outsiders started listening to the Carter Family, their descendants changed the keyword back to "will," probably because they were told they had made a silly error and should correct themselves. It certainly isn’t the only case where they changed one of their songs to fit the expectations of different audiences.

Still, "can" is the version that people with little money bought in the 1930s, and "will" is what the mainstream expects today.

Our public Protestant tradition continues to edge towards the moral certainty that prefers "will" to "can," and eventually recasts all received texts. Once I was told God tested Job to the point Job despaired of God. Some time in the late-1980s, I heard a radio preacher say that was wrong, that God would never toy with a believer. Instead, Job was in the hands of the devil, and his error was not recognizing the wiles of Satan.

As a child, I was also told David defeated Goliath, with the implication that the weak can prevail, that brains can triumph over physical bullies. A few months ago, a woman told me her minister had given her new insight into the story. Goliath lost because he doubted God.

When the woman started to retell the story she almost said Goliath denied his savior, but then realized that didn’t sound quite right. She kept rewording it until she could retain that interpretation with words that fitted the Old Testament.

New interpretations of traditional stories signal changing values. Voters who accept doubt will have different expectations for leaders, for novels or films than those who want absolutes. The trials of Job speak to a different audience than the travails of Goliath. The Godfather and The Sopranos are different narratives.

When we were faced with difficulties raised by racism, poverty, dependence on petroleum, many found austere Goliath more comfortable than tormented Job or complex David. Since Jimmy Carter was president, men who have been willing to negotiate, the peacemakers blessed of old, have been ridiculed as weaklings.

The cultural preference for uniformity that spreads change from a country song to the entire Bible, leads vocal shareholders to eliminate unknowns and demand boards replace CEOs who still believe they should work with their employees and political leaders in communities where they have plants. The same absolutism informs commentators who criticize parents who share child rearing responsibilities, because two decision makers in a family introduces an element of chance.

Self-help consultants tell people, when in doubt, do something, anything. A leader always acts. We’re told Goliath would never form a committee. Job does not grapple with a crisis in faith, he dithers. Even the Southern Baptist convention today seeks the hegemony of Methodists, the theological purity of Presbyterians.

Takeover - Part 4 - Count Down

Almost exactly one year has passed since the crisis first brewed where I last work, and things continue to deteriorate. There were 15 people in the accounting department then, and 15 people have quit, been fired or laid off since. Two clerks remain from the contract turnover, and one other was there last summer.

The customer began to raise problems about a month before its contract with the government expired, and another company was scheduled to assume the business. It needed a hard financial close, and the people responsible were not comfortable with what they thought was going on.

One member of their financial group met with the subcontractor CFO and his assistant comptroller late one week. When she didn’t hear the answers she needed, someone apparently talked to the CEO. On Monday, the two men were fired.

That left the department with one remaining assistant comptroller and a new GL manager who had been hired to replace the one demoted back to her last assignment. Rumors say the new woman aligned herself with one of the budget analysts who had not been hired for the assistant comptroller’s job, and they spent more time undermining their acting boss than doing their jobs.

Just before the customer’s deadline, the man who handled the reports sent to the customer sent his significant other in with his resignation. He finally decided what to do after 28 years: he put his health and aging parents first.

Now there was no one left who had ever reported to the customer at fiscal year end. The customer had to send back the whistle blower it had saved in December, and instructed him to do what it took. He booked a $14 million dollar loss.

As soon as the close was complete, the last assistant comptroller walked out.

Two months later, the woman who always handled the subcontractor’s invoices at the customer’s has a new job, and her supervisor has transferred elsewhere with their new employer. Neither wish to deal with my old company anymore. The CFO may have disparaged her because she was a woman, but she was the only person who understood how to retrieve the necessary financial information from the customer’s databases to do any kind of cost tracking or reconciliation.

The whistle blower is telling her replacement and his new boss he doesn’t want anything more to do with his old employer. He noted in his last visit they had changed so many things he no longer could act effectively. So far, everyone promises to honor his request and let him get on with his new job.

That leaves the contractor department responsible for releasing work to the subcontractor to deal with the now 17 million dollar loss. They know the contract requires them to make up the difference, so they’re cutting back spending to hoard enough money.

So far I haven’t heard of any layoffs among the skilled crafts. More likely, the decrease in business means less overtime and fewer men hired for the summer. The lost take home pay has now spread from the accountants who caused the problem or were the first victims, to the men who generate the revenue to cover everyone’s paychecks.

The CEO is well aware of the problems. He’s gotten rid of the man he replaced, and the man who was the contract liaison last year. The head of human resources has also been demoted and the engineering manager left. The contract has devolved back to the man who handled it before the takeover and no one has taken over the day to day operations from the previous engineering manager he fired last winter.

The CEO’s apparently made it clear to whoever is left in accounting they will be fired if they don’t find the 17 million before the end of the fiscal year. No one yet knows where the 3 million went last year, and many people have spent hours trying to find it.

The new accounting team is headed by the treacherous GL manager who’s now the acting finance manager. The equally untrustworthy budget analyst is now the GL manager. She considers it a demotion because the person who had the job a year ago didn’t have any formal training in accounting, indeed didn’t have a four-year degree. Apparently, she still thinks she should be at least an assistant comptroller, even though she didn’t meet the minimum requirement that she be a CPA.

They’re aided by the woman who’s been responsible for developing rates. She demanded she be considered for the GL manager when it opened, on the grounds she at least had a four-year degree in business and knew something about the company. The fired assistant comptroller refused to take her seriously, and hired a women who had been in the military and was working for a bank.

They’re in the phase when they’ve found no simple answers and are begging for help. The whistle blower and the man who left in May have refused. The demoted GL manager is very unhappy because her boss has sent her back and expects her to help them and continue her existing job.

The only one who has accepted an invitation is the man who may have set this all in motion years ago when he developed financial reports so complicated no one with standard accounting experience could understand them. He’s now a paid consultant helping develop the rates.

At this point it no longer matters very much what happens. If the customer finally decides the cost of covering the subcontractor losses more than offsets the costs of cancelling the contract, the hunt for the lost funds will continue. The customer is still quibbling with the previous subcontractor over their final settlement with far fewer dollars in dispute.

If the customer cancels the contract, most employees will be absorbed and the work will continue for the crafts. If the men who pulled political strings to get the contract and subcontract in the first place pull some more strings, maybe someone in Washington will sidetrack the final search. After all, in the world of lost money in Iraq, what’s 17 million dollars?

But until they either find the money or the hunt is called off, people will search, and people will worry about getting fired, will continue to get sick or see their personal relationships suffer. It’s down to the tedious work that needs to be done, with no reward, only punishment for those who’ve survived. Only the fired CFO still received his bonus.