Last week, there arrived in our mailbox a life changing letter. It was a check for $600. In the first place, it was mailed from Austin, Texas which now seems to be at the center of Bush’s universe. The United States Treasury is on 15th Street in Washington, but for this purpose was moved to Austin. Most people would fail to notice this relocation, but as a former lobbyist, I was right on top of it.
The third line of the check said “CARR BRKHAVN TAX RELIEF.” At the bottom of the check there is the legend “Tax Relief for America’s Workers.” The check is for $600 which will enable us to establish a new order for the way things are done in this country.
Robert Byrd, the Senator from West Virginia, is going to send his rebate right back to the U. S. Government because he voted against the give away. The estimable George Bush says he will probably send his to a charity. Rudy Guiliani will probably pay for some of his lawyers or his recent medical care or buy his new girlfriend a present.
All of these efforts, laudable as they may seem, really miss the mark. The idea of a tax rebate is to stimulate the economy. Nobody has addressed the secondary thought that manufacturers whose economy is stimulated, will pay more in taxes, but that thought is not in keeping with the euphoria that Tax Relief and Tax Breaks bring to American workers. Bush has given us this great windfall so it is up to us to put it to good use.
My own thoughts are based on lofty ideals. My first thoughts about Bush’s tax Relief check have to do with the Mormons, the Moonies, the Muslims and Catholics. These four religions have all been in the news in the past week or so. As a non-believer in all religions, I believe I can comment without prejudice. As I say, I do all this in the interest of lofty ideals.
Last week Thomas A. Green of Provo, Utah learned from a state court there that he will spend the next five years in prison. He also has to repay $78,000 to the state for welfare checks fraudulently collected by his family. Green is 53 years of age.
Green’s offense against the State of Utah is that he violated the law on polygamy. I mean, he did it big time. In the last few years, Green has acquired five wives, 30 children with at least two more on the way. Most of his wives seem to be in their twenties. He is still to be tried on charges that one of his wives was acquired when she was 13 years of age. The State says that’s not marriage; it’s rape. So old Tom may be laid up for awhile and will be out of the marriage business for some time.
Now with my rebate check I can do something about all this. I don’t propose to do anything about polygamy. It would be pointless because Green’s defenders say that the man who prosecuted Green (Leavitt) and the senior Senator from Utah (Hatch) are products of polygamist marriages in the past. Instead, let’s deal with the fact that in this country, there are 1000 men and about 1004 women in the general population. I believe the same ratio also applies to Utah.
Given that fact, let us suppose that each man acquired five wives and that 30 children came from these unions as with Tom Green. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that soon we’d run out of women for the polygamists to marry.
On the other hand, women outnumber men by large margins in many countries of the world. That condition can be found in India, the Philippines, Zambia, Korea, the Congo and Uganda as well as among the Eskimo tribes near the North Pole.
Before the male-female situation becomes more dire, I am going to use my $600 rebate check to advertise to females in those countries that willing wealthy husbands await them in Utah. The polygamists out there will make me a saint in Salt Lake City. That would be fitting, since I am retired and would have ample time for saint work.
Now we turn to Emmanuel Milingo, the Catholic Archbishop of Zambia. Milingo lost his head a few weeks ago and fell under the influence of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of Korea and New Jersey. Reverend Moon arranged a wedding of several hundred couples. Reverend Moon picked out the brides who all seemed to come from his native Korea. It is now claimed by the church in Rome, that Archbishop Milingo took leave of his senses when he fell under the influence of Reverend Moon. When it came time for the marriage ceremony to be performed by Reverend Moon, he (Moon) told Milingo “Have I got a girl for you!” The girl he had in mind was a 45 year old manicurist named Maria Sung. Milingo is 73 or 74 years of age. So Reverend Moon married the former Miss Sung and Archbishop Milingo. Both were very happy, even though Milingo spoke no Korean and the former Miss Sung spoke no Latin or Swahili.
Now at the outset, this causes a technical problem. Do the Moonies address the former Ms. Sung as “Mrs. Archbishop” or as “Mrs. Milingo”?
The happy couple had a week or two of wedded bliss until the Vatican decreed that Milingo would have to dump his wife or face excommunication. Somehow, the Vatican got him to come to Rome – and man, that’s all she wrote. In short order, old Milingo said that he had been moved by the words of Pope John Paul II and wanted now to obey the laws of the church. As part of the deal, Milingo now says that he likes Maria Sung as a sister and “I will continue to pray for you for the rest of my life.”
It seems to me that Milingo’s promise of lifetime prayers are of dubious value. He has to do something dramatic to get back into the good graces of the Holy Roman Church. Now we know that the Church frowns heavily on divorce. There was a scare a week ago when the former Ms. Sung (Mrs. Milingo) said she thought she was pregnant. Now this is great theatre. Let’s say that she did produce a child. Naturally, that child would attend Catholic schools. When registering that child, the nuns naturally would ask who the child’s father would be and the child or Ms. Sung would reply “The Archbishop of all Zambia.” And fortunately, that script will not apply as Ms. Sung says it was all a false alarm.
Now with a divorce out of the question, the only possible answer is annulment. Millions of people get them including the beloved mayor of New York who succeeded in having his marriage to one of his cousins annulled. So annulment is the answer. The Archbishop and Ms. Sung can’t go forward as a married couple. Ah, but here’s the rub.
Annulments cost money. Lawyers are involved. There is record searching to be done. An annulment may take as much as 10 years although I suspect that John Paul II would set a new course record for Milingo’s annulment. So the answer is clear. In answer to a call from higher authority, I will use Bush’s rebate check to underwrite Milingo’s annulment. I know $600 won’t cover all the costs, but what ever is left over, I will cover from my Social Security payments and from personal savings. However, if Ms. Sung doesn’t cooperate, I’ll have to rethink the whole scheme.
Now we turn to a question that has bothered me for many years. It involves the Muslim faith. In the old days we used to call those people Muhammadans, but now they have been upgraded to Muslims.
A week ago on a Sunday, which is a work day in Israel, a Muslim suicide bomber took a strapped on bomb into a Sbarro Pizza parlor in the heart of Jerusalem and set it off. In the explosion, many Israelis were murdered and wounded. The Muslim bomber was wiped out. Not even a trace of him was left. To Western eyes, this is nothing other than deplorable murders. To the Moslem clergy, it is a cause for rejoicing.
Now, whenever this sort of thing happens, the Imans who are the preachers of the Muslim faith, say that the bombers were martyrs because they are doing God’s work which is to wipe Israel off the map. Islamic martyrs are guaranteed a good deal according to the preachers of that faith. According to the Imans, entry into Paradise is automatic for martyrs. Secondly, the Koran promises that every martyr is entitled to 77 virgins and 70 wives. The preachers say this is all covered in detail in the Koran. Unfortunately, I don’t read Arabic and if I did, I wouldn’t spend much time with the Koran. But if this is what the Koran says – and I believe that to be so – then certain questions are raised.
If the martyrs are entitled to 77 virgins and 70 wives, then the question arises are these two different groups of people? That would mean that the martyrs would have to deal with 147 women. (For purposes of this discussion, I am assuming that we are dealing with women.) That is a pretty heroic task even though the martyr may have many hundreds of years to complete his work. And I am assuming that he will be required to make love to all the 77 virgins, which may not be true.
Secondly, if the 70 wives are taken from the 77 virgins, that is all well and good, but what happens to the seven virgins not picked? Are they put back into stock or pensioned off? If the martyr has had his way with all 77 virgins, at least seven of them will not qualify as virgins and thus, not be able to marry.
In this day of equal treatment for women, let us assume that a woman straps bombs to her body and proceeds to blow up Jews all in the name of advancing Islam’s interests. The Imams, while rejoicing, would then have a large quandary. By blowing up the perceived adversary, the former lady would have to be called a martyr. So far so good. But now comes the reward part of the proposition. Does the female martyr qualify for 77 male virgins or 70 husbands? Or does she qualify for only female virgins and female wives? What with all the harems and belly dancing shows, I doubt that 77 male virgins over the age of ten exist anywhere in Israel or in the Middle East. I would think that potential female martyrs ought to give some thought to the unfairness of the whole proposition before they strap on the bombs.
So much for female martyrs. Now we turn to the practical aspects of the reward offered to male martyrs. Muhammad was born in the year 570 AD and lived until 632 AD. According to the beliefs of Islam, Muhammad upon his death, was seated on a white horse from which he ascended bodily into Paradise. The site in Jerusalem is now the Dome of the Rock Mosque. So we must conclude that the idea of Paradise started at least by the year 632 AD. That was 1369 years ago.
I am assuming that every one continues living while they are in Paradise. Apparently, death does not occur to residents of Paradise.
Now this is a sobering thought if it ever occurs to the average male martyr. From what I have read, the average male martyr ranges from 18 to 24 years of age. Before he straps the bombs on, he should realize that his reward could be a 1000 year old virgin or a much younger one of only 400 years. Or one of his rewards wives may have 250 years on her speedometer. I don’t know much about Islam’s martyrs, but thoughts like these would surely slow me down. I’m not going to live long enough to solve this mystery. So to deal with these questions, I am going to use Bush’s generous rebate check to establish a think tank sort of like the Brookings Institute. I know these questions are deeply troubling to me and to thousands of other religious scholars just like me. I believe that a Brookings-like Institute will provide the answers to these troubling questions and in so doing, will offer relief to the many thousands of information deprived sufferers who look to Islam for guidance.
Now we come to the beloved Rudy Guiliani who is suing Donna Hanover for divorce. If he succeeds, he will be free to marry his “good friend” Judith Nathan. If he goes through with marriage to Ms. Nathan, it will be his third marriage. And he sits in the front row pews at St. Patrick’s.
I could use Bush’s rebate for a large wedding present to Guiliani however, he doesn’t stay married for long so the money may be wasted. I could donate the $600 to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York where it might come to Cardinal Egan’s attention, in which case he would find some reason for them to be married in church. In the end, I believe the best use of Bush’s $600 would be to buy a one-way ticket to Utah where Guiliani would feel at home. He may take over when Tom Green goes to jail.
I have several other ideas for the $600 windfall. With all the kids gone, it might be a good time to double the size of the house. Or maybe it would be better to use the money for ballet lessons for me. In the end though, I’d like to devote some sympathy and understanding to the German Army. I know it’s 58 years late in coming, but if not now, when?
The problem that concerns me is that German Army commanders drove around their prisons (Stalags) in Mercedes cars. Some tried to imitate Hitler by driving cars with wheel wells to hold spare tires. Now this had to be expensive. Mercedes were eight cylinder or 12 cylinder cars made largely for racing. As a means of spreading love to everyone, I propose that my $600 check be used to buy commanders of German Army prisons Fords or Chevvies. I know it’s a little late for recent wars, but it strikes me that this is good solution for the Germans and it would help the American automobile industry.
In this little essay, I have offered five different proposals to dispose of the 43rd president’s tax relief check. All of them are especially meritorious. I haven’t cashed mine yet because I am anxious to make the right choice. After all, $600 windfalls don’t happen every day. So if you see me alone in the back yard with my lips moving, you will know that I am still wrestling with the happy problem that George Herbert Walkers Bush’s son has given me.
A final thought. I hope Bush was paying attention when his English professors at Yale discussed Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” An albatross figures greatly in the telling of that story. I have concluded that Bush’s “Tax Relief for America’s Workers” will be his albatross and his political epitaph.
E. E. CARR
August 26, 2001
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I wrote a pretty extensive bit of commentary on the 77 virgins before, which you can find here. Rereading it, 2013-era Kevin comes off a more than a little insensitive, but the facts are correct and my incredulity was, I still think, legitimate. If you don’t feel like going back, the bottom line is that the Koran doesn’t go into almost any detail at all about the companions that one gets in the afterlife; all the detail is in the Hadith, which are thousands of lines worth of basically hearsay that’s taken incredibly seriously by the Muslims of the world.
Also, the Koran is pretty explicitly anti-suicide, and of course not all Muslims are radical, so it’s unfair to assume that all Imams rejoice after a successful suicide bombing. If I remember correctly from my classes, to qualify as a martyr one has to actually engage in combat, and blowing up civilians doesn’t count (at least to mainstream Islam).
All that aside, I love the flow between the rebate check, polygamy, and terrorism. Certainly the kind of essay that only Pop could write.