Easter
I am pretty darned old by now. Seriously old. 78. I often feel pretty bad about it. I am weaker. I have less endurance of any kind. Cruelly enough, food does not taste as delicious as it used to taste. The only food that consistently tastes just about perfect is Skuna Bay fillet of salmon and prime rib-eye steak.
To offset the sad feelings that go with old age, I often make lists of what I have that is fabulous and wonderful. For me, it’s hard to say what is the absolutely best thing I have left.
It might have been “friends” a year ago. But just within the last six months or so, I have lost two of my best friends: Steve Greene, a Hollywood friend of fifty years’ standing, a loyal, witty, empathetic man who could always be counted on for cheerful and thoughtful encouragement. Alas, he died about six weeks ago, quite suddenly. High on the list would also have been Aram Bakshian, Jr. He was a fellow speechwriter for President Nixon. His intelligence and knowledge were second to none.
Even including my father, he was as well informed as anyone I have ever known. High culture, history, political currents and cross currents — all were within his ambit. Plus, his loyalty to his colleagues, including me and Mr. Nixon, were always nonpareil.
I could also say that having had well-connected, encouraging, devoted parents who could be counted on for anything in life from references to money was crucial.
But beyond any other factor in my life has been my wife, Alexandra. I was first lured to her more than 55 years ago at a black tie Fourth of July party by her staggering beauty in his light blue satin dress. But I have been attached like the Rock of Gibraltar to her ever since by her faithfulness, intelligence, FORGIVENESS, sense of humor, and pride in her family and in me.
Despite my many lapses of judgment and occasional anger, she has been as steadfast as a human can be. When she looks at me late at night with her soft, melting brown eyes, as we are watching reruns of Perry Mason, I see in her a goddess, a saint, the closest thing to divinity there is on earth.
I may lose my money. I am already losing my health. As long as I can lie in bed next to her, I am in heaven.
Thank God over and over. She is all I ever wanted.
Saturday
Long ago and so far away, in the Sterling Law Building of Yale Law School, in about 1967, I took a course in Criminal Law. The teacher was the renowned Joe Goldstein, a brilliant lawyer.
He taught us that Crim Law had many conundrums in it, puzzles that were simply too hard to readily figure out. One was the “insanity defense.” That was a defense lawyer’s device to say that if a defendant were too mentally unwell to tell right from wrong, he could not be prosecuted.
The problem, of course, was that by definition, if a man committed a terrible crime, he was too sick to tell right from wrong. Maybe therefore there should be no criminal prosecutions for bad crimes or maybe there should be no insanity defense.
Another puzzle that comes up now is “prosecutorial discretion.” In a criminal law case in most if not all districts, a prosecutor can bring a defendant before a grand jury and accuse him of a crime. The grand jury is 12 or 24 “ordinary citizens” without legal training in what constitutes a crime.
The defendant is generally not allowed a lawyer at that stage. Nor is he allowed witnesses or evidence. And grand juries are famously easy to convince. A famed saying at law is that a good prosecutor “… can indict a ham sandwich.” This means that a Donald Trump, loathed by Democrat prosecutors, hated by ordinary men and women in Manhattan, can get Mr. Trump indicted blindfolded.
When we were taught that by Mr. Goldstein, I thought that at some point we would also be taught that there are “checks and balances” on what a prosecutor could do to get an indictment.
The shocker was when we learned that there were no such checks and balances. Prosecutors could get away with murder. Once a politically motivated DA starts in on you, you’re done for in a politically biased venue. There is no escape hatch short of having Perry Mason and there is no real-life Perry Mason.
This is exactly what has happened with Mr. Trump in NYC. It is possibly about to happen to him in Georgia. Once the prosecutors are wound up and ready to go, there is revolution in the air — and where it stops I tremble to think.
