Yes, I read the article.

I read Mr. Stein telling the story of what he says he said.

There is apparently a video of his speech. Where there is video there is soundtrack. Where there is soundtrack there is a transcript, or the possibility of a transcript. That's what I want to read.

If Mr. Stein's actual words would exculpate him, that's what he needs to print. If his actual words only dig him a bigger hole, I can understand why he would spend so many column inches deconstructing his emotions and telling us all how aggrieved he is.

In the meantime, considering who would buy his book and who wouldn't, he's probably very happy. He gets to say "I am not a racist", call the media names, and receive the kind of free publicity -- scandal -- that political authors drool over.

The fact remains, the man from the bank in San Francisco who used the Q&A to criticize Mr. Stein for his opinion (which is what he was paid to speak about, not about any useful professional expertise) grouped the Huckleberry Finn remark with other (unnamed) jokes about black people that Mr. Stein allegedly made during his speech. In his rebuttal article, Mr. Stein cannily focused on the remarks about Mark Twain's classic because he knows that advocates for the First, many of whom are liberals, have very tender feelings for this particular work.

But I would like to know about the other "jokes" he may or may not have told. It could possibly be that the effect was cumulative, and that the man from SF finally became irate after having to sit politely and listen to other "humor" for 10 or 15 minutes. But if we can't see or hear or read the whole presentation, we'll never know what really happened.

Among Mr. Stein's reported remarks:

Feminism: "Has poisoned the culture by a relentless war on nature." [Natural = barefoot and pregnant, perhaps?]

On gay issues: "The drive to question and mock 2,000 millennia of religious teaching, to dismiss it out of hand ... is tragic." [Inquiring minds want to know: what religious teaching might he be talking about? The regulations in the Pentatuch? Jesus boiled the whole Law down to the Two Great Commandments, about loving God and loving one's neighbor as one's self, so it may not be Christianity. The Buddhists don't care about this. Maybe the Koran? And "2,000 millennia"? Humanity doesn't have that much recorded history. But details don't matter when one's stock in trade is hyperbole.]

I'll tell you, if I had to sit in a luncheon my business organization had paid for and get heartburn listening to "humor" like this, he would have been lucky to get away with a mild rebuke from the floor.

The man is radical and abrasive. He seeks to provoke people, and he did. Excuse me if his whining about a less-than-laudatory reaction to his remarks fails to impress me. He's trying to hide behind Mark Twain's white suit, but the complaint isn't about Twain. It's about him, and the tie-dyed tee shirt he still wears under his Brooks Brothers blazer.

Somebody complained to the newspeople, who like controversy because it sells. What about all those people who Mr. Stein says approached him and whispered that they liked his work? Did none of those eye-witnesses write letters to the editor in support of Mr. Stein? Not one? Hmmm. With friends like these...

Call me when the liberals start burning his book. I'll come with my fire extinguisher.

Regards--
Mary Anne