A commenter on my antisemitism post pointed out that I am overly responsive to Richard Witty, and I think this is true.
Richard and I knew each other first when we were teenagers. We were like family, I remember playing on docks with him. His aunt was my mother's closest friend, Edith Fine, a Massachusetts judge who was the soul of fairness and generosity and decency, truly a great woman. In 1991 Edith in her robes married me and my wife in my wife's cousin's back yard, and a few years later she died in her 60s. My mother still grieves for her, and so do I.
My mother doesn't really approve of the stuff I write on this blog (not that she reads it all), and neither does Richard. I feel guilty about upsetting my mother so much, and Richard stands in in my mind for a lot of that feeling. I know that Edith adored Richard, and had great respect for his intelligence. I'm not saying it's good that I give Richard the power I do, but this helps to explain it.
I spoke at Edith's memorial service, and told a story about what great judgment she had. In the 1980s I worked on an article for The New England Monthly about the Harvard Crimson. The article involved going back to the newspaper offices where I had cubbed 10 or so years before, and surveilling their executive sweepstakes, a Lord of the Flys-meets-Eton ritual called "the turkey shoot." The Crimson kids hated my presence there, and in retrospect I don't blame them; I was a prickly pain in the ass, and I put a chair in their newsroom and defied them to throw me out, those kind of antics that will never get you anywhere as a journalist, or get you to a place that I don't think is worth getting. Anyway, I felt guilty about my behavior because of the contempt, and this bled into a confusion about the story I was doing, what justified this intrusion? And I went to Edith, who told me I had an absolute right to do the story. This is an elite, a very important one, even if it's just a rehearsal for the real show, she said, and the First Amendment is all about the right of journalists to inform the public about how elites are formed and what their values are. Needless to say, that became my mantra as I worked on that story, those words gave me great clarity. I only wish I'd emulated Edith's gracious bearing and kindness, too! I often think of Edith's words now, too, when I dare to examine the role of the Israel lobby in foreign policy and the importance to that lobby of Jewish wealth. I'm not saying she'd approve of my behavior entirely, but the principle was sacred to her.
